This makes it considerably less piracy-friendly than an FTP account, which can hold hundreds of simultaneous users. Also, the music is streamed to your home computer so you can listen to it, but you never have a stored copy. This is a protection feature that RealNetworks already uses, so it's more difficult to redistributed the music. From CNN staff reports Another feature, called Beam-it, lets users do the same things with CDs they already own. Users download the appropriate software, then put their CD into their PC, where the music is automatically uploaded and then stored as a digital music file in their MP3 account.
Users can then customize play lists of the tunes they store in their account.
The recording industry is less than happy with the current state of online music distribution. However, MP3 sees its move as boosting CD sales, as users store files of CDs they have already purchased. Mary Lisbeth D'Amico is Munich correspondent for the IDG News Service. Pages will open in a new browser window External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.