The cost of downloading music from the internet, using services such as Napster, iTunes and TescoDownloads may be reduced if a price fixing case being brought against the major music labels in New York by Eliot Spitzer, the state attorney general, is proved.

Investigators acting on Mr Spitzer’s behalf have summoned several music publishers in a preliminary inquiry as to whether they have colluded in price fixing.

A spokesman for Mr Spitzer said his office was seeking information on wholesale prices charged by companies including Warner Music, Sony BMG, Vivendi Universal and the London-based EMI.

In September, Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, labelled music publishers as “greedy” and blamed them for high prices on their iTunes service. Apple are also under investigation for alleged price fixing by the European Commission.

Should the New York investigation demonstrate price fixing, publishers may be forced to reduce the wholesale prices offered to download websites.

Music download websites saw record levels of traffic over the festive season, where internet ratings agency Hitwise said that visits to music websites increased by 50 per cent on Christmas day, as consumers sought to download tracks on their newly received MP3 players.

Paul Myers, the founder of Wippit, a legal download operator that provides branded services for publishers including the Evening Standard and the Daily Star, expressed concerns over the prospect of increased charges from music labels.

“I hope that the industry doesn’t raise the market prices before consumers are completely used to paying and downloading singles and albums over the internet,” he said.

“It would be irony that just as the major labels begin to win the battle against internet piracy, they may kill their golden goose before it’s laid its first egg.”

The growth in the legal downloading of music tracks may also be hampered by the measure passed in France's lower house of parliament last week to legalise the private use of peer-to-peer file-sharing of films and music on the internet.

Should the measure pass through the upper house, France would be the first country to legalise peer-to-peer downloading. This comes at the same time as many European nations are fighting to take control of illegal downloading of copyrighted material.

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