Online music retailer eMusic—which claims the second spot place behind Apple iTunes Store in the ranks of digital music services—said that it had a banner holiday season for 2007, Macworld reports, surpassing its forecasts by 100 percent and ending the year with more than 400,000 paid subscribers.

On Christmas Day, eMusic "counted nearly 500,000 song downloads. It currently has more than three million tracks from more than 20,000 labels—the largest catalog of independent music available for purchase and download on the Internet," the article said.

Amazon recently joined eMusic as one of the top online music portals that sells its music in the unprotected, flexible MP3 format. Unlike eMusic, which focuses on independent labels, Amazon sells DRM-free tracks from three of the top four major labels.

eMusic reports record holiday sales [Macworld]