A new version of the online music store Napster was reborn on Thursday with a test version of Napster 2.0, which will compete with Apple and MusicMatch for online music service.

The test version of Napster 2.0 will contain more than a half- million songs from all the major music labels, and with individual song and album downloads as well as a subscription service.

The online music store will begin operation for the general public on Oct. 29, according to the Santa Clara, California-based Riox Inc., which owns the Napster name. It shelved its former online music service, pressplay, and starting moving subscribers to Napster.

Napster 2.0 users should pay one US dollar for a song and about 10 dollars for full albums or monthly subscription. They can copy, or burn, single songs onto CDs for an unlimited number of times, but no more than five CDs with the same playlist.

The online music market is rapidly increasing in recent years. There have already been several major names in the online music business, including Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music store, Buy. com's BuyMusic.com, RealNetworks' Rhapsody, MusicNow and MusicNet.

File-sharing over the most popular peer-to-peer networks has declined in recent weeks, apparently caused by the lawsuit campaign against downloaders by the recording industry.

Traffic on Kazaa's network, the most popular name for file- sharing services, dropped by 41 percent between the last week of June and mid-Sept., according to Nielsen NetRatings, which monitors Intent usage.

Meanwhile, the Jupiter Research company said music sales are expected to grow from 1 percent of the total music market to 12 percent in 2008, generating about 1.5 billion dollars in sales.

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