Instead of continuing to fight music piracy on college campuses, the majors have changed their tune and are backing an ad-supported service that lets college students legally download music for free.

While the service from Ruckus does offer free music to college students, that music comes with plenty of restrictions, the New York Times reports. The free version of the service is only available for users with a .edu email address. Also, the songs downloaded can be played only on a computer - not on Microsoft's Zune media player or Apple's iPod.

Ad-supported music downloading has begun to gain momentum as subscription models from companies such as Napster and Rhapsody have struggled to gain a foothold. Ruckus has licensing agreements with all major record labels and thousands of independents.