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The Mashboxx P2P software, once it has been completed and released, will allow users to preview and purchase music from EMI artists from within existing P2P networks. By applying filtering technology to search results, Mashboxx can identify tracks that labels like EMI have authorised for trade and then the user can choose to sample tracks for free or purchase them as downloads.

The free, sampler option will let users play full length tracks up to five times before they expire. Mashboxx quotes a NPD Digital Music Study which showed that nearly 75 per cent of P2P users found sampling to be important before deciding whether to purchase music.

Users will be able to burn paid-for downloads onto CD up to seven times, play them on five PCs and transfer them to Windows

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Media-compatible portable players an unlimited number of times.

'Legal peer-to-peer services which offer consumers a great user experience and which compensate creators appropriately are good for music fans, good for artists, and good for the digital music market as a whole,' said David Munns, vie chairman of EMI Music. 'When it rolls out, Mashboxx will be a no-obligation way for fans to really immerse themselves in discovering music, turning their friends on to what they like and getting excited about artists and music they've not yet heard. It has the potential to be a very good revenue stream for those who make their living from creating and investing in music.'

In order to make its music available in this way, EMI is having its digital catalog fingerprinted by Snocap, the technology created by file sharing pioneer Shawn Fanning.

EMI follows Sony BMG, who signed up with Mashboxx in June, in backing the as-yet-unproven efforts to legitimise and monetise p2p sharing. It remains to be seen whether the appeal of p2p lies in the technology - in which case Mashboxx has every chance of succeeding - or merely in its vast, unlicensed repository of free music.