Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc. will initiate a service in April for users of mobile phone Internet connection services that will allow them to listen to samples of songs.

The company hopes that the service will lead to expanded sales of CDs.

On April 2, Sony Music will begin offering SoundMusic/i to users of the i-mode service of NTT DoCoMo Inc. Users will be able to listen to roughly the first 30 seconds of a song.

In addition, Sony Music in April will make the service available to subscribers to the J-Sky Web service of the J-Phone group. By the summer, the company will begin offering the service to the EZweb subscribers of DDI Corp.

The system will use the streaming technology, developed by Tokyo start-up J-Stream Inc., for music distribution.

The service will begin with about 20 new songs, and every month, at least 20 songs will be added. As early as this year, Sony Music will add search functions. At that point, mobile phone users will be able to access the roughly 5,000 songs that Sony Music currently allows consumers to listen to via an Internet site for personal computers.