AT&T has struck a deal with indie-music bastion eMusic, the world's second-largest online song-downloading service, by which users will be able to browse, preview, and purchase any of eMusic's 2.7 million songs directly to their phones.

AT&T is the latest US mobile service provider to offer over-the-air music downloads, mirroring similar offerings by Verizon and Sprint, in a bid to get customers to use phones for more than just talking. Under the deal, users will also be able to download a copy of each song purchased to their computer at no extra charge.

But there are some downsides, though. The service will cost $7.49 for five songs (in addition to AT&T's wireless data charges,) as opposed to the price of $9.99 for 30 songs for customers who subscribe to the desktop service. Moreover, it won’t provide wireless downloads to the iPhone, which is sold exclusively by AT&T and Apple. Only three phone models from Samsung and one Nokia handset will be eligible for the new service at this time.

So basically, you end up paying more for eMusic over AT&T, but can do less than with eMusic over the Internet.