Record companies, music publishers and songwriters travel to Washington this week in a growing dispute over royalty payments that threatens industry plans to sell music online.
The major recording labels and music publishers who own music rights are at odds over on-demand or interactive music streamed over the Internet.
While the world's big music labels argued successfully that free song-swap service Napster infringed their copyrights, songwriters and music publishers now claim that at least one major label, Universal Music Group, has violated their copyrights.
The House of Representatives Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property has called a hearing for May 17th as the major record companies gear up to launch online subscription services they hope will convert millions of Napster users into paying customers.
"Companies are trying to build legitimate online services to compete with Napster and the music publishers are the biggest stumbling block to that," said Mr Jonathan Potter, executive director of the Digital Media Association (DiMA) - a trade group representing Webcasters or online radio companies.
Publishers say they are merely defending songwriters' rights to be compensated.
"The reality is that songwriters have been ignored - or taken for granted - in the debate over distributing music on the Internet," said Mr Carey Ramos, an attorney for music publishers.