The MusicNet deals come on the heels of an announcement by rival service Pressplay, owned jointly by Sony and Universal, which announced on Wednesday it had signed a deal with Warner, giving it music from all five major labels as well.

BMG is part of Bertelsmann AG, EMI is owned by EMI Group, Warner Music is part of AOL Time Warner, Universal is part of Vivendi Universal and Sony Music is owned by Sony.

MusicNet's other partner is RealNetworks.

MusicNet already had licensed music from its own partners, BMG, EMI and Warner, and on Friday announced these labels had granted users further rights that include permanent downloads, burning and transfers to portable devices. The Sony and Universal deals include the same features.

Both Pressplay and MusicNet have for the past year been vying to get more content and enhanced features to compete with unlimited free services such as Napster, which was popular before it was shut down by lawsuits from the music industry.

In response to a Justice Department probe, the labels have also been more aggressively licensing their music to several independent services such as Listen.com's Rhapsody and FullAudio.

With content and burning established, these services now have to get more ambitious about marketing themselves, analysts said.

"Now that everybody has their content, it's time to be aggressive about getting customers, with holiday promotions, special deals to distribution partners and getting the message to consumers who are more likely to go to peer-to-peer sites," said Lee Black, analyst with Jupiter Research.

Ease of use and service are key, said P.J McNealy, analyst with GartnerG2.

"We're seeing a break in the logjam and the day is now in sight that these subscriptions will be competing about service instead of licensing deals," McNealy said.

The paid services, which charge monthly fees averaging around $10, face an uphill battle in trying to convince fans to pay for something they can easily find for free.

Susan Kevorkian, analyst with IDC, said her firm estimates there are half a million subscribers in total for all the paying music subscription services.

By contrast, research firm ComScore Networks said by September, free unauthorized file-sharing service Kazaa had topped 10 million U.S. home users.