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Originally developed by South Korea's Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, Audizen's MT9 format provides a different channel for each "instrument" in a track, so the listener can separately adjust the volume of each.

Six channels are nominally dedicated to voice, chorus, piano, guitar, bass and drums. Turn off the vocals and you have a karaoke track, or mute everything but the voice to get instant a cappella.

MT9 is the commercial name for Music 2.0, which the Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG) has accepted as a candidate

"We made presentations to the participants and they were all surprised to see it. They immediately voted to make it a candidate for the digital music standard,' said Ham Seung-chul, chief executive of Audizen.

Ham said that both Samsung and LG have expressed interest and expects the first MT9-enabled devices to appear next year. Files are generally served as a packaged album and copying is actively encouraged.

"It's like having a CD or cassette tape. Once you buy it, you can lend it to your friends," Ham said. "We don't want to be too fussy about DRM."

That alone should ensure that major record companies are less than willing to widely adopt the format, though some 2,000 to 3,000 albums are available through Audizen's Korean beta of its player software.

And the developers should not be too optimistic about overtaking MP3. The fourteen-year-old format has proved remarkably resilient, seeing off WMA and its own designated successor AAC to remain the format favoured by the majority of online music stores, even though AAC files are prevalent thanks to the success of iTunes.