Yahoo Japan Corp., which operates the country's most-visited Web portal, started an online audio streaming service that lets users listen to full songs for free to attract customers to its music sites.

Tokyo-based Yahoo aims to lure customers to buy CDs from the shopping portal or download music for a fee after they listen to the sample songs, the company said today in a faxed release. Customers can't save the music files onto their computers from the streaming service.

Competition in Japan's online music distribution service is intensifying after Apple Computer Inc. started an iTunes online music store in Japan, offering more than 1 million songs, mostly for 150 yen ($1.36) each. Yahoo Japan's site charges 210 yen to download new songs from the country's popular music charts, while some older songs cost 150 yen.

Apple's iTune online music store in Japan, which began Aug. 4, had 1 million downloads in its first four days of service, according to its Web site. Label Gate Co.'s Mora Web site offers a similar service, while Tower Records Japan Inc. plans to offer song downloads starting next year.

The Nihon Keizai newspaper earlier reported on the start of Yahoo Japan's service.

Yahoo Japan is 42 percent owned by Softbank Corp., Japan's second-largest provider of high-speed Web service, and 33 percent owned by Yahoo! Inc.