MySpace, the world's largest social networking site, is gearing up to partner with the major record companies to create an advertising-supported service that would allow consumers to listen to music for free on their computers, The Financial Times reports.

Several unnamed sources in the article said that MySpace is in talks with Sony BMG, Universal, Warner Music, and EMI—that would be all four major labels.

The new MySpace service would presumably stream songs for free to listeners, and then sell ads based on the amount of traffic they receive. It would probably also offer a way for users to click on a song they want and pay to download it permanently, the report said.

MySpace built its reputation around services for musicians, such as those little built-in music players that you find on MySpace artist Web pages. So it makes sense to see MySpace try and leverage more of that aspect of its user base, since it's not something that Facebook would be particularly well suited to compete with.