Project Playlist has been sued by nine major record labels for "massive infringement" of their copyrights.

The website, which allows users to find, play and share music with others for free, gets more than 600,000 daily users and an average of 9.5 million daily page views, according to the record labels.

Major recording companies including Warner Music Group, EMI Group's Capital Records and Universal Music Group are seeking to prevent Project Playlist from offering users free music.

In the law suit, which was filed in US district court in Manhattan, said: "In short Project Playlist's entire business amounts to nothing more than a massive infringement of the record companies' copyrights."

According to Digital Media Wire, Project Playlist maintains that is does not host any music files itself but instead merely shows links to files on third-party sites, including record label websites.

The battle between labels, artists and websites that offer music to download has been running for years and was kick-started in 2000 when Metallica filed a lawsuit against Napster after they discovered their entire back catalogue was available for free on the site.