Virgin Radio has trumped Radio 1 by signing a deal with online music service Napster to launch a download chart that will make its debut three days before the BBC broadcasts its first rundown of the best-selling online tracks.

Radio 1 announced earlier this month it had signed a deal with the Official Chart Company to broadcast a weekly download chart that will attempt to track the recent upsurge in popularity for online music purchases.

But now Virgin Radio has nipped in ahead of the BBC with its own download chart, which will be launched at 7pm on Sunday August 29.

The Virgin Radio chart will be presented by Ben Jones, and will count down the 20 most popular tracks among Napster users that week.

John Pearson, the chief executive of Virgin Radio, said the move was the first step in what would become "a much broader partnership".

Unlike the BBC chart, which is based on sales of downloaded tracks from a variety of online music stores, the Virgin rundown will be compiled exclusively by Napster and will combine download sales with tracks listened to by the online retailer's subscribers.

Napster will also continue to contribute sales figures to the official Radio 1 chart, which will be broadcast at 6pm every Wednesday from September 1 as part of Scott Mills' show.

For £9.95 a month, subscribers to Napster - the former renegade of the online music world that was relaunched earlier this year as a legitimate concern - are allowed to listen to songs on their computers as many times as they like, although they pay more to transfer tracks to other devices.

The music industry believes the launch of download radio shows will help revive interest in the charts, with early signs that the audience buying downloads is older than the teenage market that drives the singles chart.

Music executives hope that a wider range of artists will be featured, with tracks that stay in the charts longer and move up and down depending on their popularity, rather than because of price-cutting campaigns and marketing muscle.