"Melbourne-based internet company Destra has signed a new deal with Warner Music Australia that will take the list of downloadable songs on its online music stores to more than 200,000 titles. Destra, whose only real competition in the fledgling Australian digital music market is Telstra's BigPond Music, said the Warner deal would initially provide it with tracks from artists including REM, Matchbox Twenty, Missy Elliot and Magic Dirt. Destra chief executive Domenic Carosa said the company had now signed five record labels - including Sony, Festival Mushroom, EMI and BMG Australia - and aimed to have a catalogue of 500,000 tracks by mid-year. "The only major label we don't have signed is Universal," he said yesterday. "We're also in discussions with a number of large overseas independent labels." The company's website - DestraMusic.com - offers a legal digital music service through online retail partners Sanity, HMV, JB Hi-Fi and Chaos Music - a group that Mr Carosa said represented more than half of all music sold in Australia. "The biggest question is how do we convert people walking into these stores into a digital music sale?" Mr Carosa said he was less worried about the inevitable arrival of digital giants like Apple with its iTunes store, or ninemsn, and more concerned with file-swapping websites that allowed internet users to exchange pirated songs. "Our biggest competitor in this market space are services such as Kazaa," he said. "But we're going to start seeing a lot more legal action from the record companies against consumers who are infringing copyright." Since offering tracks for 89¢ each earlier this month - a price that undercuts BigPond by 10¢ - Mr Carosa said sales had increased 600 per cent."
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