

LimeWire, a popular file sharing application that offers users access to music, movie and other downloads via the decentralized gnutella network developed by Justin Frankel, the late Gene Kan and others, has more than doubled the size of its music store catalog by adding around 1.2 million tracks from music distributor The Orchard.

"This is a way to partner with artists and labels to provide a way to connect the artist and the fan, and just to be a contributor to a new and exciting music industry," said LimeWire CFO Jesse Rubenfeld. "We think there's interest in this product, and we've made a large investment to offer a quality program. We're excited about it."

While bit torrent clients and online music services generally offer a wider range of music than gnutella, New York-based LimeWire still appears to have a large user base, which it hopes will buy MP3s from the store when they're not downloading them for free.

Songs are available

as individual downloads for 99 cents, or users can choose monthly plansincluding 25 songs for $10, 50 songs for $15 and 75 songs for $20 (amere 27 cents per song if you use all of the allotted monthlydownloads).

Rubenfeld explained via the phone that the LimeWire applicationwon't share songs purchased from the LimeWire store. "We encode aspecial marker as a basic ID3 tag that functions as a flag to theLimewire client, which will not share a song that was purchased fromthe LimeWire store," he said, adding that LimeWire has yet to implement"buy" links within LimeWire's file sharing search results.

However, they plan to do so soon – and when they do add thoselinks, users will still have the option to download a free version ofthe song from the gnutella network.

All two million or so tracks in the LimeWire music store are available in a DRM-free 256 Kbps MP3 format, and a few exclusives are included. Many albums in the store are free, including the Ear to the Ground: Beijing

compilation, featuring a number of contemporary Chinese pop musicians.

Aside from this new music from The Orchard, the LimeWire store features800,000 or so songs from IRIS, Nettwerk Music Group and RedeyeDistribution. You don't have to run LimeWire in order to download thesetracks, although if you have it running, they'll be automaticallyimported into your LimeWire library.

As it tries to put together the music store, LimeWire continues todefend itself in a lawsuit brought by all four major labels that hasbeen ongoing for over two years. Perhaps this store could work in itsfavor in that case. If the company can show that P2P usage leadsdirectly to music sales and royalty checks, the labels could changetheir minds.

Another factor that could help convince the judge that Rubenfeld has musicians' best interests at heart is that he's also a working musician. The singer/songwriter has planned a record release party in Manhattan for September 13 (also his "twenty-tenth" birthday).

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