Spotify, which was wildly popular in Europe and expanded to the U.S. during the summer of 2011, allows users to choose music to listen to and stream, for free, for a limited amount of hours per month. Premium accounts, which range from $5-$10 per month, allow unlimited access to the music, including from mobile devices, and higher quality recordings.
Says Parker (via NME): "Spotify is returning a HUGE amount of money [to the record labels]. If we continue growing at its current rate in terms of subscribers and users, we will overtake iTunes in terms of the amount of revenue we contribute to the music labels in under two years. The iTunes store, to this day, is so slow. I'm amazed."