Online music subscription company Pressplay has signed a licensing deal with record label BMG bringing the likes of artists Elvis Presley and Whitney Houston to the download service.

Four of the five major music labels now allow their content to be downloaded through Pressplay, owned by music giants Vivendi and Sony.

The Warner Music Group is the only music giant not to licence its content to the service.

EMI Group EMI.L has also licensed its content to the service.

Thousands of songs

Users are able to pay to copy songs from major artists onto recordable CDs and onto a variety of portable systems such as MP3 players.

Pressplay said the latest deal with BMG, a unit of Bertelsmann would add "tens of thousands" more songs to the service.

Already more than 120,000 songs can be accessed.

The service opened for business at the start of 2002 as Sony and Vivendi fought to prevent the tide of peer-to-peer music services.

It hoped to persuade people not to log on to free music download sites such as Napster because they do not pay royalties to artists or record companies.

But it has had criticism as users cannot keep any of the songs once they unsubscribe to the service.

The service upgraded in August to offer users unlimited music file streaming and downloading for a fixed fee a month, from Vivendi and Sony's catalogue.

A more expensive service allows users to copy music onto portable devices up to 10 times a month.