The founders have signed licensing deals with Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, EMI Music, Warner Music, Merlin and The Orchard.
Spotify.com works with both PCs and Macs – all you have to do is download the relevant software from the website. Although it doesn't allow downloading of songs – just streaming – the interface is based heavily on iTunes.
Users can listen to songs on their computers as many times as they like. There's no option to transfer songs to a portable MP3 player at the moment, but this hasn't been ruled out for the future.
Choose between free or Premium pay service
There are three levels of service available. The free version is funded by advertising, and gives you access to whichever songs you want without restrictions. Users can legally listen to tracks from the likes of The Rolling Stones and Radiohead.
If you want to subscribe to the ads-free version of the service, there's a 99p per day option which enables you to browse by artist, title, album, genre and year for 24 hours.
You can also create, share and collaborate with friends and colleagues on playlists, and share links to music. Current members can send invites to to others allowing them to use the service for free.
Finally, the Premium service gives you unlimited access to music without advertising. You also get extra Spotify invites to share with friends and family.