Company offering free music streaming

LONDON, Feb. 23 (UPI) -- Numerous major record labels have joined forces with Spotify, a British music service that allows people to stream music onto their computers for free.

The Times of London said the companies have done so to prevent consumers from illegally downloading tracks. The newspaper also noted that Spotify's catalogue features 4 million songs and is quickly growing to the size of Apple's iTunes. The downside to using Spotify is that the music cannot be transferred to portable players such as iPods. Since it doesn't charge for its music, Spotify supports itself through ad sales.

"We think that music has gone from being about ownership to being about access," Daniel Ek, chief executive and founder of Spotify, told The Times. "I have established that. People listen to more music than ever from a bigger diversity of artists. They don't care so much any more about actually owning physical CDs, or even downloading, they care about being able to access whatever they want, whenever they want it, wherever they are."

"Piracy is never a good thing, but for too long we've tried to stop it rather than recognize that it happens and then find a way to deal with it," jazz-pop artist Jamie Cullum remarked. "You can't prosecute a 12-year-old boy for illegally downloading a record. You just have to make it easier for him not to."