US based website, BlueBeat.com have been hot with a bill of nearly $1 million dollars after being sued for illegally selling songs which included tracks from the Beatles.

The website have reportedly agreed to pay record companies 25 cents per song which amounts to almost $1 million.

Before the site was forced to shut down for legal reasons it had already distributed over 65,000 songs from the Beatles alone while it had also sold music from Coldplay and other top acts.

The judge in the case stated that the website has been in violation of copyrights held by record companies thus leading to unfair competition in the online music selling business.

Owner of BlueBeat.com, Hank Risan, continues to deny that his company did anything wrong as said that the pioneering technique of using “psycho-acoustic simulation” had allowed the website to be able to create their own unique versions of the original copyrighted songs, however this argument was rejected by the judge who considered that the songs had been based on music from CDs that the company had purchased in the first place.

The settlement is reported to be much less than was initially being sought by the record labels suing the site with the lawyer for BlueBeat.com saying: “I feel that was sort of acknowledgement on their part that they don't have the damages they claimed. So long as we pay royalties we can stream their music all day and all night without a problem,” he added in reference as to if the site would continue.