By Darren Waters BBC News Online entertainment staff

Sonic Selector offers access to 36,000 albums

Sonic Selector is a piece of software that lets users listen, but not download, songs from a library of more than 350,000 tracks.

The service, which is available to users of websites MSN, Tiscali and MTV, is a rival to Napster UK, which offers a similar online jukebox.

The launch comes one day before Apple is expected to launch iTunes in the UK.

Sonic Selector is available in the UK, France, Germany and Italy and will only work with users of Windows Media Player, version nine.

'Instant record collection'

Charles Grimsdale, chief executive of OD2, said streaming music - rather than downloading - was a very popular method of listening on a PC.

"Most of the music our users listen to on their PCs will be streamed," he said.

"We wanted to create a digital jukebox, and Sonic Selector gives people an instant record collection which is 350,000-tracks strong."

Download company Napster launched a UK service in May

Napster offers a similar service but only to customers who pay a �9.95 a month subscription. Subscribers are allowed to download an unlimited number of songs but they cannot be copied to a CD or a portable device without paying an extra fee.

Sonic Selector will also face competition from the growing number of digital and internet radio stations which offer more "personalised" playlists of music.

Users of OD2's technology can still download and copy tracks to CDs or portable players for an average of 99p per song.

For the first two weeks of the launch of Sonic Selector, users will be able to download tracks for half the usual price.

Unlike Napster and iTunes, OD2 does not brand its own download music services.

Instead it provides the technology to retailers such as HMV, Virgin, MTV, MSN and Tiscali.

'Format wars'

Mr Grimsdale said the "format wars" of digital music downloading was a problem that needed to be resolved.

There are currently two key rival music formats for legally-downloaded music - Windows Media Audio (WMA) and AAC, which is used by Apple.

Music downloaded from websites which are in the WMA format cannot be played on Apple's popular iPod music player.

And tracks downloaded from Apple's iTunes music store can only be transferred to one portable digital player - the iPod.

Tracks from both services can be copied to a compact disc, however.

The problem is due to digital rights management (DRM) technology, which is used to stop people copying music and transferring it to different computers.

'Gateways'

Mr Grimsdale said: "My guess is that there will be gateways between the two DRM systems in the not too distant future.

"We are looking at ways of solving that problem."

But he said the format wars would not lead to a situation similar to the VHS and Beta tape battles of the 1980s, which left one system dominant and the other all but obsolete.

"Our commitment is that the catalogue you download, you own," he said.