EMI is planning to be the first company to sell music on the Internet following a deal with French firm Eurodat, convinced that the company can provide it with a secure transaction facility and copyright protection for its artists.

The record industry has so far been reluctant to embrace the Internet as a sales tool, mainly because of copyright infringement fears. EMI?s move, which will include making tracks from artists such as The Spice Girls, The Waterboys and The Beatles available on the Internet, could set a precedent within its industry.

Jeremy Silver, vice president of EMI?s interactive media division, confirmed that the company was in ?advanced negotiations? with Eurodat and that trials on the software were still ongoing. He added that if everything goes to plan, music will be available for sale on the Internet next month.

?Our thrust with the Internet is certainly to encourage it but make sure that our copyrights are fully protected and our artists are fully recompensed when it comes to selling their music,? said David Hughes, EMI Records? spokesman. He considered the Eurodat online record shop initiative as ?very progressive,? particularly in relation to Eurodat?s Audiosoft File Structure (ASFS) system.

ASFS is a tracking system that detects when music is bought or listened to and enables the ?accurate distribution of proceeds to all parties implicated in the copyright law", according to Eurodat. It also permits the secure transfer of audio files across high speed networks, ISDN, satellite and the Internet.

Eurodat launched the system in April as an experiment entitled Paris Music, alongside Lyonnaise Cable and Kleline. Eurodat president Francois-Xavier Nuttall said that ?in five years time, electronic distribution of music could account for about 15 per cent of worldwide sales.?

Sony is also interested in Eurodat?s software, especially since its run-ins with unofficial Web sites run by Oasis fans. Last week, Sony and Oasis management company Ignition threatened legal action to Webmasters of sites selling bootlegs and copying material from the official Oasis Web site.

Eurodat confirmed that a number of multinational record companies have expressed interest but that EMI is the nearest to actually going online.