Leading the charge are phone makers Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Motorola, all eager to seize on the booming popularity of multimedia phones which double up as MP3 players.

Nokia will open an online store here in the next three months, while Sony Ericsson plans to do so by the end of the year.

Motorola, which bought homegrown music store Soundbuzz in January, will release a phone next month that will let a user browse its entire music collection. He can then choose which songs to download to his phone.

Until now, music lovers here have only had Soundbuzz and SingTel's MusicVibes service, which catered only to its subscribers.

But as CD sales continue to plummet and users turn in increasing numbers to downloading their music, the phone makers have followed suit.

Most users will be able to access the new stores, regardless of the brand of phone they have.

Nokia is likely to charge users here the same rate to download a song it does at its British store - 80 pence (S$2.24).

The store will also offer a streaming service, which allows viewers to listen to its entire catalogue without buying songs, for a subscription fee. The British store charges 8 pounds a month for the service.

Read the full story in Tuesday's edition of The Straits Times.