As he paws through compact discs in Borders Bookstore here, dentist Seth Kinder's eyes widen. "$18.99 for one CD with 10 songs?" he says, reading the price tag on Leonard Cohen's "Ten New Songs." "I can join an online service for two months for that and have unlimited access to 180,000 songs."

Mr. Kinder's impulse to go to the Internet and pull down whatever music he wants – one song at a time and with far less impact on his wallet – signals one of the biggest changes to hit the music industry since the LP.

For years, millions of Americans swapped songs on the Web free of charge. But then the courts stepped in and shut down the popular online music service, Napster, that was used to download the songs and became the nemesis of the music industry.

Now, however, a growing number of record companies themselves are offering songs over the Internet for a modest fee. Stung by the continued availability of free music from "pirate" companies operating since Napster, they're offering subscription services that allow consumers to buy songs one at a time online.

The move is ushering in a fundamental change in how music is conceived and sold. It may also lead to the eventual demise of the multi-song album or CD format itself.

"The hard copy, album-form compact disc will die. It is happening," says Don Gorter, chair of the Music Business Department at Berklee College of Music in Boston. "The manner and length in which artists make their musical statements will likely look far different than today."

The latest companies to succumb to the forces of the Web were Universal Music Group and Sony Entertainment, two of the world's largest record companies. Earlier this month, they combined forces to help make it easier and cheaper for consumers to buy songs on the Internet.

They join eight other new licensing and selling services that now include participation from all five of the world's leading record companies. The new subscription services have come in the wake of worldwide piracy that is costing the industry billions a year, threatening the decades-old economic structure of the music business.

"The recording industry as we know it is under attack from all sides and trying to figure out how to reinvent itself," says Drew Borst, an analyst for Bernstein & Company in New York.

With their eyes on such uncertain future, many artists are pulling back and waiting to see how new models of business pan out. Country star Clint Black recently laid out a detailed plan to completely circumvent record companies – with individual units purchased via the Internet from his own website, clintblack.com.

How quickly this new world plays out depends on the changing behavior of two distinct cohorts of consumers, as well as the interplay between them. One of the two groups is younger buyers, aged 16-24, who have little incentive to purchase music because of the proliferation of free (if illegal), file-exchanging services.

"Why in heaven's name would I subscribe to a subscription service for $10 to $25 a month for access to a limited number of songs, when I can have practically any song that exists for free?" asks Carey Brooks, a teenager in Sherman Oaks who has downloaded about 500 songs free from an online swapping service known as Morpheus.

From her computer hard drive, Brooks and others then download the digitized songs into other formats, from portable MP3 players, to tape decks, to CDs. While offering a fee-based alternative to absolutely free music seems ludicrous and futile to some, the new services are attracting significant numbers of subscribers, company officials say.

"A year ago, most people were telling us subscription services were a pipe dream – now nine are up and running with pretty good success," says Michael Graves, a spokesman for Lycos Rhapsody. The service, offered at Listen.com, boasts 185,000 titles via a number of packages for prices ranging from about $10 to $25 per month.

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