Although being totally legal, Oxford University has pulled the plug on the Swedish music service.

Management of the Oxford University has blocked Spotify, the Swedish digital music service legally offering instant access to millions of tracks, because it uses P2P technology.

“Spotify is a music streaming service. It relies on a peer-to-peer system for distribution of content, and its use is therefore forbidden on the University network,” the Oxford University IT-department explained on its website.

As Spotify can’t be justified as being educational it would be a waste of the taxpayer’s money to let the music service congest the university’s bandwidth. they said.

Not surprisingly, students are outraged by the University’s decision.

In Sweden music sales increased last year for the first time in a decade - mainly on the back of better legal alternatives such as Spotify. Streaming services accounted for 46 percent of all legally downloaded music last year, up from 17 percent 2008. 

"Neither the labels nor Spotify have responded to the ban in Oxford thus far, but we assume that they are not amused since it was hailed by most users as one of the few competitors to downloading music illegally", the website Torrent Freak, that reports news on BitTorrent and filesharing issues, wrote.

Founded in 2008, Spotify is one of the world's largest streaming websites. The music service currently has some 5 million members across Europe and is expected to be launched in the US and China.