Finally! I can get the Dischord catalog on my phone! This morning, digital music retailer eMusic announced a deal with AT&T to sell songs from its indie-centric catalog to mobile subscribers over-the-air (ie. direct to your phone, like a ringtone). Users of phones with the service, like the Samsung Sync, can download five songs per month for $7.49, and buy additional five-song bundles for the same price any time. All tracks come with a duplicate that can be copied to a computer or iPod, and unlike with other mobile download services, all files come without copy protection.

This is the first foray into over-the-air downloads for AT&T and eMusic — the second biggest digital retailer, behind iTunes — and it’s the first to use the subscription model, but Sprint and Verizon have launched mobile download services in recent years that haven’t caught fire with users. Many consumers say the prices are too high, the downloads are too slow, the interface is clunky and, most of all, most Americans don’t listen to music on their phones. “We’re not going to mobile devices because a small screen is the best place to download music,” says eMusic CEO David Pakman.” But if you look three to five years out, there’s just no question that some percentage of your Internet access time is going to be spent on a smaller device, so we need to be sure that our service works really well there.”

Steve Jobs, meanwhile, has stayed out of the mobile-download business — no, you can’t download songs directly to the iPhone — saying the consumer experience is still unsatisfying. And since iTunes still sells about 75 percent of all digital music (Apple announced today that it passed the three-billion-download mark) it’s unlikely the public will change its mind until he does. And if Eminem has his way, iTunes won’t be selling his music at all: The rapper is suing Apple for copyright infringment, claiming his publishers haven’t issued the right to sell his music via download.