Tiscali aims to trump Napster et al

Tiscali believes that it has come up with a valid and "compelling" alternative to illegal peer-to-peer music sites. But analysts are dubious about its chances of stamping out piracy.

The internet service provider's (ISP's) Music Club is a joint venture with digital music company OD2 to provide legal music via the internet.

Depending on how much the customer pays, they will be able to stream tracks, download them to their hard drive or burn them to CD.

The service will cost from £4.99 to £9.29 per month, but free download offers are available for the first six months, depending on connection.

Those with a narrowband connection will be allowed 300 credits that will let them either stream 300 tracks, download 30 or burn three to CD. Broadband customers receive an additional 1,000 credits.

Mark Mulligan, an analyst at market watcher Jupiter Research, gave a cautious welcome to the news and said that the partnership is a step in the right direction.

He suggested that, although the business model is not yet right, the recording industry has no choice but to accept technological changes if it wants to stamp out piracy.

"Downloading files from the internet is now a fact of life," said Mulligan. "The recording industry is never going to completely eradicate music piracy so it has to offer people a compelling alternative.

"OD2 has realised that the right people to partner with are the ISPs, but the music giants have still only made a limited amount of content available.

"The record industry has to learn to open up and be a lot more imaginative, as the internet offers a lot of benefits online and offline."

But the OD2 model has more severe critics who have warned that it does not go far enough to discourage people from downloading files from peer-to-peer sites.

Wayne Rosso, president of file sharing site Grokster, described it as a formula for disaster.

"My message to the industry is get real. How greedy can they be?" he said. "The current models are extremely expensive and restrictive.

"Downloading from the internet allows the music industry to cut out the middleman and distribution and manufacturing costs, yet it still costs just as much to download and burn tracks to CD as it does to buy one in the shops."