Musicbank Online Service in Licensing Deal With EMI Music

Musicbank, an upstart online locker service, announced its fifth licensing deal with a major record label. The agreement with EMI Recorded Music, which involves an undisclosed share of Musicbank’s equity and payments for each EMI song played, follows similar agreements with BMG Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment. San Francisco-based Musicbank has yet to announce licenses from the music publishers, however, and it can’t launch the service without them. Like San Diego-based MP3.com and Redwood City, Calif.-based Myplay Inc., privately held Musicbank plans to let consumers listen online to digital copies of the CDs they own, making their music collections accessible through any player linked to the Internet. By obtaining licenses, which MP3.com did only after losing a copyright infringement lawsuit, Musicbank will be able to give users nearly instant access to their collections online, instead of requiring them to transmit copies of each CD to the Web, as Myplay does.