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The one millionth song was bought by Michael Brennan of New Jersey, USA who will have a track recorded by Barenaked Ladies in his honour.

The 100 million sales have been racked up since eMusic relaunched three years ago, with 50 million in the last year alone. Its achievement is made more impressive by the fact that its two million-song catalogue is sourced exclusively from independent labels. But it does have certain advantages over rival stores who do have contracts with the major labels: the absence of DRM, 192Kbps VBR encoding and compatibility with

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all portable music players.

'Our 100 million download milestone is a defining moment not just for eMusic but for our industry,' said David Pakman, President and CEO of eMusic. 'It just goes to show what can happen when you offer people passionate, adventurous music on the terms they want: well priced, expertly curated, and universally compatible: they buy a lot of it! This is a celebration of the triumph of inspiration over mediocrity. It's also a testimony to the enduring appeal of independent music: the artists who make it, the labels who market it, and to eMusic subscribers, who have discovered and downloaded tracks from thousands of brilliant independent artists.'

Rather than adopt the pay-per-track model of Apple's iTunes or the subscription model favoured by Napster and others, eMusic provides a fixed number of downloads in return for a monthly fee: £8.99 will buy 40 downloads; £11.99 buys 65 and £14.99 nets 90 songs. New subscribers also get 25 free songs.

eMusic is compatible with both Mac OS X and Windows. For more information go to emusic.com.