After months of complaints and legal action about the threat of music piracy on the web, the music industry - and musicians - finally got down to work last week to sort out their tangled affairs and to try to prepare for the future of music distribution.

But with the removal of Napster, the online music distribution outfit, as a rallying force, deeper conflicts have been revealed. By the weekend, at least four competing subscription delivery services had been announced, and musicians themselves were complaining that their interests were being woefully overlooked.

The flurry of deals and partnerships intended to capitalise on Napster's demise as a free service is intended to make it easier to sell and listen to songs online. But there are fears that so many competing services will only complicate matters further.

Last Monday, AOL Time Warner, Bertelsmann and EMI announced the founding of MusicNet, a new platform to be distributed by AOL using RealNetworks software. Then Vivendi's Universal Music Group, the world's largest music company, reached a tentative agreement to acquire the online service EMusic to use as a platform for its Duet partnership with Sony and bought Yahoo into the deal.

The Duet service is expected to launch this summer with streaming music (ie tracks can be heard 'live') and plans to add downloads shortly thereafter. The company says it will have thousands of songs on the internet available in a fee-based subscription model.

Next, MTVi Group, the Internet arm of the cable music channel, launched a service that allows people to download songs - for a price - from all five major record companies. And Microsoft's internet service, MSN, announced that it is starting a radio-like service called MSN Music that will deliver 'near CD quality' music over the web.

Of course, each competing alliance believes it has the technology and appeal to become the dominant force in online music distribution and the music industry is expected to spend several months experimenting with different models for providing music on the net. It remains to be seen if web users will pay for music they once downloaded for nothing.

Napster chief executive Hank Barry says he expects fewer than 3 million of the service's 60 million registered users to pay for it. But Nicholas Butterworth, head of MTVi, expressed confidence that consumers would be won over. 'We are going to do everything we can to make music sales go up,' he said. 'There is clearly a lot of demand for digital music.'

The announcements came just as the US Senate began hearings into the business practices of the music industry and its future online. Already faced with criticism that it has dragged its feet in offering music online, the industry has put the deals together in a hurry.

The principals of the MusicNet deal say it only came together two weeks ago after a series of all-night negotiations.

But several key parties have apparently been left out of the discussions. Before the labels can launch these services, they must come to terms with the songwriters and composers over licences to their work. Until recently an ongoing battle between record labels and songwriters has attracted little attention, mostly because it revolves around the complex mechanisms of music copyright law. But the consequences of this dispute could be even more important to the music industry than the question of digital music.

The clash between music publishers and record companies over control of digital copyright frames an even larger question about the relationship between the creators of content - musicians and songwriters - and the industry. Before the Senate last week, singer Alanis Morissette and former Eagles musician Don Henley testified that the industry had not heeded the wishes of musicians, many of whom feel they are held to punishing contracts by corporations that have little interest in anything but the bottom line. Morrisette even ventured that 'this so-called "piracy" may have actually been working in musicians' favour'.

Dozens of major artists, including Henley, Eric Clapton, Tom Waits, Tom Petty and country legend Merle Haggard have formed a trade group, the Recording Artists Coalition, to demand better contracts, better copyright protection and new rules on ownership of their songs.

'The ones making the music aren't the ones making the money,' says Haggard. 'The artist pays for everything and ends up with nothing. The big boys with the cigars, they get it all. Not only do they cheat you on the way in, they rob you on the way out.'

The growing anti-industry sentiment was expressed by Bono last month when he was invited to induct Island records founder Chris Blackwell into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in New York. 'You think you could run Coca-Cola,' he told the assembly of music business suits, 'but you couldn't. You could only rob it.'

Singer Courtney Love recently captured the industry's attention when she sued to break her contract with Vivendi Universal, accused the industry of 'corrupt' accounting practices and claimed record labels deducted exorbitant fees in order to ensure that even successful artists barely recouped their advances. Love says she has received support from hundreds of artists, including Prince.

At issue is the record industry's business model, which typically holds artists to seven-album deals. They are structured so that one or two successful acts pay for the hundreds that fail. Music executives say artists fail to consider that the cost of doing business is skyrocketing, squeezing already slim profit margins. They dismiss the complaints as sour grapes from a collection of ageing acts whose recent albums have failed to sell.

Not so, say the musicians, they were taken advantage of. Songwriter Tom Waits says his first contract paid him only 15 cents per copy sold in the US. 'This thing is very unfair, and the companies know it. You're very young when they push this contract in front of you. It's like you're some 15-year-old girl and everybody's saying, "Baby, you're so beautiful. Please join our modelling agency". All you see is runways and makeup and sequins and hair spray. You have no idea what you're signing.'

Some in the industry concede that they are unpopular and are losing the public relations battle with disgruntled musicians. 'We are like the tobacco companies,' says one executive. 'No one really likes us.' To avoid testing the law in the past, record companies have typically rewritten the contracts of disgruntled stars, offering higher royalty rates and other concessions.

Angry artists began to organise after discovering that lobbyists acting for the industry had persuaded lawmakers to pass a Bill that would prevent artists from ever gaining control of their recordings. Musicians have found a friend in Republic Senate leader Orrin Hatch, himself a songwriter, who helped overturn the bill.

Still, musicians face a difficult battle in winning the kind of 'free-agency' contracts that film and sports stars enjoy. 'They'll never get organised,' predicts one record company executive. 'All those duelling egos... they all suffer from LSS -Lead Singer Syndrome.'

If the leaders of the rebellion manage to rally their famous troops, it could spell serious trouble for the industry. 'It's nearly impossible to imagine a music business where recording artists have bargaining clout,' says entertainment analyst Michael Nathanson.

'It would cause the traditional economic model to collapse. The industry as we know it would cease to exist.'