The worldwide music industry has broken out in gold rush fever, as major media companies jostle to stake a claim in the burgeoning online music scene.Up to now, online distribution of music has been the province of sample tracks from new music by big-time artists, or free tunes from unknown musicians. But music-loving Web surfers will soon have a broad range of music to download. The Net_s potential to help companies capture a bigger slice of the $40 billion music industry, and even expand the total market for everyone in the business, has fueled run-ups in the stock of music-related initial public offerings in the last few weeks, as well as numerous deals among music sites, record labels, and high-tech companies. "I think that the music industry will be completely turned inside out," said Al Teller, music industry veteran and founder and CEO of online record label Atomic Pop, last week during an industry panel organized by Jupiter Communications. Last Tuesday MP3.com launched an IPO, and its shares nearly quadrupled to $105 from an offering price of $28 in the first hours of trading. The company, whose site
offers free downloads of noncopyright-protected songs in the MP3 file format, is now trading in the mid-$40s.