BBC News Online: Entertainment: New Media

Religious tunes kickstart net service

EMI is already backing MusicNet, with BMG and Warner

The company has agreed a deal with internet music technology group Liquid Audio to launch a US subscription service for the catalogue early in 2002.

The new service would be more consumer-friendly than other download facilities offered to date, Liquid Audio said.

Napster

"People can go out, for a pre-prescribed amount of money a month and download a bunch of songs, own those songs and burn them to CD - not just rent them like the other services,'' said Gerry Kearby, Liquid Audio chairman.

"For the first time, it brings the consumer much closer to the experience that they learned to love with Napster - in a legitimate way.''

EMI, BMG and Warner are backing internet music service MusicNet, due to launch by the end of 2001.

EMI is also to license its artists' catalogue to rival website Pressplay, backed by Sony and Universal.

Compilations

But it is thought the services available from MusicNet and Pressplay will consist of a limited number of streams and music downloads that "time-out" or expire.

Although the service offered by EMI and Liquid Audio would offer less breadth, it would allow consumers to pick the songs that matter most to them, and create a compilation disc - rather than temporary downloads.

Consumers would also be able to transfer favourite compilations to portable players.

"This is the first of hopefully many more genre-base services where we feel we can offer music fans a good offering of music,'' said EMI vice president Ted Cohen.