Now download music leagally with Nokia Ovi Music

But what it did was to start massive copyright violations, which lead to songs transfer. In 2000, American record label A&M records sued Napster for piracy. Napster did battle it out in the court, but lost the cases and eventually had to pay $26 million as settlement.

So what is music piracy al about?

Music piracy can be defined as the stealing of music. One scenario could be borrowing a friend's CD and burning a copy for yourself. Also, downloading music from the Internet if the song's royalties are not paid.

But the trend of downloading songs from the Internet was first innovated and started in 1993 in the University of California by Rob Lord, Jeff Patterson and Jon Luini.

Since then it has spread its roots all over and now music piracy is a part and parcel of the game.

In India, the concept of online music started approximately four to fiver year's back. Music companies like Saregama HMV, T Series and Sony BMG have started digitizing their tracks and since then the online music market has also started growing.

India boasts of rich heritage of music. Be it be classical, or Bollywood, rock or pop, the country has space for millions. While the original CD, cassettes would be expensive; the pirated CDs movies would hardly cost anything. Therefore piracy is a good medium for many to earn good bucks.

According to the figures from the International Intellectual Property Alliance, India suffers a staggering 17.7 from the piracy, which includes music piracy, video piracy, software piracy and games piracy.

Rajat Kakar, Managing director, Universal Music feels that it's a significant step towards shaping a digital ecosystem.

"Ovi Music Unlimited is truly unique and addresses key challenges of accessibility, affordability and piracy that have existed around music consumption," he said.

"Our association with the market leader Nokia is a significant step forward in shaping the digital music ecosystem in India," he added.

Singer Mohit Chauhan too is kicked about that fact that his latest album Fitoor would be available to a wider audience to download legally.

"I am happy to be associated with Nokia with Ovi Music Unlimited that provides my fans a legal platform to download songs from my latest album, Fitoor," he said.

Nokia's marketing head Viral Oza claims this initiative to be a win-win situation for all. "Music is a universal language that everyone identifies with. Our composers, singers and technicians put in significant amount of effort to create music that can be enjoyed by everyone," he said.

"But despite all the hard work the Indian music industry is facing a lot of challenges from illegal downloads. Ovi Music Unlimited is win-win offering that gives consumers a platform to download millions of legal songs for free and music industry an opportunity to monetize those downloads," he explained.

The Ovi Music Unlimited includes catalogues from major global labels Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI Music. Nokia's local partnerships include South Indian Music Companies Association (SIMCA), Indian Music Industry (IMI), Hungama that represents major labels like Yash Raj, T-series, Eros amongst others.

Though piracy can't be stopped instantly, but just imagine why would anyone go for a pirated stuff, if you have unlimited original songs, which can be downloaded legally at a nominal rate.