US leading coffee retailing chain Starbucks debuted a new service Monday to sell digital music downloads on CDs at one of its stores in an attempt to draw music- loving customers.

The company debuted the service at its revamped Hear Music Coffeehouse in Santa Monica, southern Los Angeles. And the service will be soon launched in many other chain stores across the United States.

Starbucks will begin selling digital music downloads on CDs to customers at 10 of its stores in Seattle, Washington, later this spring, and expand the service to 2,500 of about 5,400 US chain stores in the following years, said Don MacKinnon, Starbucks Corp 's vice president of music and entertainment.

The Hear Music Coffeehouse, one of four combined coffee and music stores run by the chain, will have 70 stations for customers to order music. Patrons could use a flat, touch-screen computer to browse through a collection of about 150,000 tracks.

The store charges US$6.99 for the first five songs and US$1 for every track after that. And the buyer could get a labeled CD with a jewel case.

By comparison, popular on-line digital music services like Napster 2.0, MusicNet or the iTunes Music Store offer between 300, 000 and a half-million tracks, which sell for 99 cents each or US$10 for a full album.

Starbucks stores will be equipped with several HP Tablet PCs, headphones, printers, CD burners and a server, which will store the library of licensed music. The company hired computer manufacturer Hewlett-Packard Co to design the service.