Record label BMG Entertainment is letting customers pay for and download its music over the web and has struck the first in a series of distribution deals with Lycos Music.

Only 100 songs and albums will be available initially, but by Christmas all 2500 songs in BMG's catalogue will be on sale.

Artists available in the first batch include Santana, Christina Aguilera and Whitney Houston. Singles will cost between $1.98 and $3.49, CD albums will cost between $9.98 and $14.98, and double CDs between $11.98 and $20.98.

The tie-up is a major coup for Lycos, which faced competition from rivals Yahoo and AOL. Lycos last month signed a similar deal with another music business powerhouse, Universal Music Group.

Record companies have been forced to speed up their plans for digital downloads in the face of file-swapping facilities from Napster and other websites.

However, Aram Sinnreich, an analyst at Jupiter Media Metrix, said: "It's commendable that BMG wants to at least distribute throughout a number of partner sites, but I'd say it's too little, too late in this case."