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By Michael McDonough
Associated Press Writer
Friday, October 24, 2003; 8:47 AM

LONDON –– A file-sharing network on Friday said it has signed a deal with EMI Music to put a "majority" of the music publisher's catalog online for users in Europe.

British company Wippit Ltd. said the deal with EMI will boost the number of tracks it offers online by about 100,000.

Wippit's chief executive and founder, Paul Myers, told The Associated Press that his company signed a deal last month with EMI, whose artists range from the Rolling Stones to Coldplay.

Myers said the Beatles, who are part of the EMI family, were not included in the deal, but refused to specify which acts were included or say how much the deal was worth.

No one at EMI was immediately available for comment Friday.

Wippit distributes authorized copies of songs on its file-sharing network, allowing subscribers to download an unlimited number of tracks for an annual fee of $49, or $6.50 a month.

Consumers can burn the songs onto CDs, transfer them to an MP3 player or store them on a computer, and can keep them after their subscription ends, he added.

Major record companies have balked at that model, worrying that people would download large amounts of music and then stop paying the monthly fees.

Myers would not say whether EMI had imposed any restrictions as part of its file-sharing deal, other than limiting its availability to users in Europe. The subscriber's credit card indicates where the user is based, and Wippit plans to restrict the EMI catalog to European users.

Wippit has about 165,000 registered users but only 5,000 subscribers who pay to access the service's 60,000 tracks from nearly 200 independent labels, Myers said. He added that EMI was the first major label to sign with the service, 77 percent of whose users are in Britain.

The deal will be officially announced next month and Wippit will offer EMI Music products "before the end of the year," Myers added.

Tracks are downloaded from Wippit in Windows Media Audio format and encrypted using Microsoft's Digital Rights Management, meaning they cannot be shared on other file-sharing networks.