EMI fights Net pirates

Record giant EMI is to start selling more than 90 per cent of its catalogue over the Net in a bid to counter the explosion in online music piracy.

The company has signed deals with 20 digital music distributors including MTV, Freeserve and Dotmusic to offer more than 140,000 tracks for sale.

The decision means pop fans will be able to download tracks by acts such as Coldplay, Robbie Williams and David Bowie for between 80p and £1.

Downloaded albums will cost about £10, depending on the retailer.

EMI has been forced into the move because fans are downloading more free music from the Net than they are paying for in record shops.

Global music sales fell by more than seven per cent to £20billion last year because so many MP3 files were burned on to CD after being downloaded on to computer hard drives.

Napster, the US pioneer of online song-swapping, was forced offline but other sites such as Kazaa and Soulseek have stepped in to replace it.

Tony Wadsworth, chief executive of EMI UK, said: 'The industry needs to use all legitimate means possible to hamper piracy and make as much music available online as possible.'

The deal marks the biggest move yet towards selling music on the Web.

It means people will be able to copy music on to recordable CDs, portable music players and hard disks. Until now, EMI and other major labels have severely restricted the number of their songs available online. Acts such as The Rolling Stones and The Beatles have refused to sell music on the Web.