Listen.com Signs Notable Deal

Listen.com struck a key licensing deal with the National Music Publishers Assn., the latest in a series of agreements that are clearing the way for online subscription music services.

San Francisco-based Listen.com is developing a service called Rhapsody that will let consumers hear and sample music on demand. Although company officials say the technology is ready to roll, they can’t offer Rhapsody until they obtain licenses from all the labels and publishers that hold copyrights to the songs featured on the service.

Today, the company is expected to announce a deal with the Harry Fox Agency, the licensing arm of the music publishers’ association, that will give it access to all the songs in participating publishers’ catalogs. The association represents more than 27,000 publishers, any of which can decide not to participate in the agreement.

As in the publishers’ recent deal with the major record labels, the agreement doesn’t say how much Listen.com will have to pay per song in royalties. Instead, it calls for the two sides to keep negotiating and for Listen.com to pay an advance of $500,000.

Listen.com plans to launch Rhapsody Dec. 3. It will let subscribers hear music from an online jukebox or through Net radio.

In another development, EMI is expected to disclose plans today to offer genre-based packages of downloadable songs for a monthly fee, starting with its extensive catalog of Christian music. The subscription services, powered by software from Redwood City-based Liquid Audio, will be the first from a major record firm to let subscribers record songs onto CD, move them to other computers or ship them freely to portable devices.