In what could mean a significant increase in its subscriber base, Napster Inc. announced Thursday that the University of California, California State University and the University of North Carolina will allow it to offer the company’s subscription music downloading service to students.

The UC system has 10 campuses throughout California, including UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Irvine and UC San Diego, while the Cal State system is comprised of 23 campuses including several campuses in the Los Angeles area. There are 16 schools in the University of North Carolina system.

L.A.-based Napster has signed up more than 40 universities in the past two years, offering its $9.95 per month subscription service at a deep discount. The colleges typically subsidize the service further to encourage legal on-campus music downloading, so students pay only a nominal amount. Students have the option to upgrade to Napster To Go, the company’s portable subscription service, which is offered at $14.95 a month.

The service was originally launched in late 2004 at Penn State and the University of Rochester. USC began offering Napster to students last July, charging $20 per year. In New York, Cornell University offers the service to its 13,000 undergrads for free.

In June, Napster announced a partnership with Dell Computer Corp. to offer universities Dell servers enabled with the Napster service, combined with a student discount for Dell’s mp3 players. The deal addressed two problems that have arisen from the popularity of digital music downloads on university campuses: lost revenue for music companies and stress on college computer networks.