Sony Makes First Online Music Deal

Sony Music Entertainment, one of the five largest record companies in the world, Monday announced its first licensing deal with an independent company offering music by subscription online.

The deal with San Francisco-based Listen.com makes Sony the last of the five major labels to license its catalog to at least one independent company selling digital music by subscription.

Its announcement came four months after the Justice Department stepped up its antitrust investigation of the labels’ licensing practices.

Listen.com is adding Sony songs to its Rhapsody service, which lets subscribers store and play an unlimited number of songs in a personal online jukebox. The songs can’t be downloaded, and they’re encrypted to deter users from copying or moving them to a portable device.

Before the Listen.com deal, the only subscription service offering Sony’s music was Pressplay, an online music distributor co-owned by Sony and Universal Music Group. Listen charges $9.95 a month for Rhapsody’s music-on-demand service, which also includes songs from EMI, BMG, the Naxos classical catalog and 46 independent labels.

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Jon Healey