With the next legal brief from San Mateo-based Napster due to be filed this week, the CEO of music site Soundom.com says that Napster could get out of the legal hot water it's in by following the Soundom model.

William Yeager, CEO of Soundom, says even though he thinks Napster is "a good idea," the business model for the controversial music-swapping portal is, in his opinion, flawed.

Yeager's advice to Napster? Pay the artists and the listeners!

Soundom.com uses a plug-in to record how many times a piece of music is downloaded, which it uses to determine how much an artist should be paid for distributing through Soundom. But the company also pays listeners at the site for completing a demographic survey to provide the company with specific music-related personal information.

"We're willing to pay for the information that we receive, namely what people are listening to, and what they're doing with their music," says Yeager.

When the consumer downloads a Soundom plug-in to an existing Winamp or Windows media player, the plugin automatically sends a highly targeted advertisement to the player in both audio and banner form, and connects to a server which contains a machine listening technology which can uniquely identify each piece of music played. This technology informs Soundom of the consumer's listening preferences, through which Soundom can then recommend similar music to the consumer, as well as the opportunity to purchase the music online