Big name labels team up for online music venture

Bertelsmann, AOL Time Warner and EMI have announced they are to create an online music service.

MusicNet will be a subscription-based service offering secure access to a catalogue of mainstream recordings, available either in streamed or downloadable format.

The firms say the service will mark the first time major record labels have been united behind a single digital distribution technology.

The firms' music publishing subsidiaries - EMI Recorded Music, BMG Entertainment and Warner Music Group - will each licence their catalogues for the service.

They said this will provide consumers with the best possible diversity of music currently available from a mainstream-sanctioned web resource.

The companies add that the service will be available on licence to other online music services - including the now Bertelsmann-owned Napster - so long as each partner can guarantee the intellectual property rights of artists will be observed.

A fourth partner, RealNetworks, will supply the web media technology to underpin the service. Together with AOL, they will launch an own-brand subscription service based on the MusicNet platform.