Internet music-download company EMusic.com launched a subscription service Monday (July 24) that will let users pay a monthly fee to download an unlimited number of songs from the company's archive of more than 125,000 licensed MP3s.

"There are a lot of guys out there ... who cannot get enough music," EMusic.com spokesperson Steve Curry said. "Traditionally, the only barrier has been that they didn't have enough money to get that amount of music. ... Now that it's all one price, maybe they'll give it a shot."

The new service, EMusic Unlimited, is priced according to the length of commitment a user wants to make, ranging from $9.99 per month under a one-year subscription plan to $19.99 on a month-to-month basis. EMusic.com has distribution deals with 600 independent labels, Curry said, including Berkeley, Calif., punk label Lookout! Records, as well as Trauma, Epitaph and Concord Jazz.

The subscription service arrives as the war over digital music and copyright rages in the courts. The Recording Industry Association of America will meet controversial MP3 file-sharing service Napster in court Wednesday to hear a judge decide whether to issue a preliminary injunction barring copyrighted material from Napster's directory. The RIAA, along with the Motion Picture Association of America, last week sued Scour Inc., which operates an online file-sharing service, for copyright infringement.

EMusic is not the first Internet music company to launch a subscription service. MP3.com, which has settled copyright infringement suits brought by some of the major labels (other suits are still pending) launched a classical music subscription service in May, which provides streamed music and a small number of downloads for a monthly fee.

Though lagging behind Internet-only music companies, the major labels are scrambling to build their own digital distribution systems. Sony and Universal are working together on a subscription service expected sometime in the next year.

The recording industry, along with outspoken artists such as hard-rock titans Metallica and hip-hop veteran Dr. Dre, is outraged about file-sharing services such as Napster and Scour, which allow users to freely trade MP3 files of copyrighted material, without compensating labels or artists. Napster and Scour both argue that Internet file-sharing drives retail CD sales, while the RIAA claims Napster use has caused sharp drops in CD sales near so-called "wired" universities, those with high-speed Internet connections readily available to students.

Planning To Compensate Artists, Labels

"I think that fair compensation — or compensation at all — is probably the biggest issue that the industry is facing right now," said Steve Forti, director of the research division of Yankelovich Digital Media, which has completed extensive surveys on digital music consumption. "There's a lot of different channels in which artists can be compensated. On the whole, what is going to be fair and equitable is going to be the overriding factor in what is going to make a successful model [for digital music distribution]."

EMusic.com will manage a general fund — 50 percent of all subscription fees after cost — to compensate artists and labels. Payouts will be calculated quarterly, and labels and/or artists will get pieces of the pie based on what percentage of the service's total downloads their music comprises.

Most of the deals are with labels, but Curry said some artists — including Vermont jam-band Phish, singer/songwriter Elvis Costello and alt-pop band They Might Be Giants — have made download deals without label involvement.

EMusic Unlimited also has a physical component that Forti said is important to consumers — fans will be able to download cover art and liner notes for some albums, and the company has a deal with Hewlett-Packard, whereby every CD burner they sell will include a two-month subscription to the service. Hewlett-Packard also contributed $3 million to the fund that pays artists and labels.

Company Cites Consumer Demand

Forti said he believes the subscription model is sound. He cited a study his firm made of more than 16,000 digital-music users (Sonicnet.com's parent company, MTV Interactive, was a co-sponsor of the study), which showed that many music fans are willing to pay up to 90 cents per song for downloads.

"If there was a service that charged 10 or 20 bucks a month that would give access to anything they'd want, that would be something the consumer would think is reasonable," Forti said.

Forti said the limited amount of MP3s licensed to EMusic.com may be a sticking point with users who want access to every song under the sun, but he said one balancing factor is that subscription services often include "like music" engines, which point consumers toward other artists whose music is similar to what they tend to download. He said 68 percent of users surveyed use music downloads to find new music to purchase through other means.

"I'm very confident that the subscription model is going to be a component of people's music consumption," Forti said. "Whether that's just for the music aficionado or for everyone is to be determined. ... The subscription model is strong, the consumers are saying that it's viable and reasonable, and it lends itself to compensating the artists, the composers and the distribution labels in a very fair and equitable way."