Turntable.fm, the popular New York-based music streaming service that lets groups listen to music together and virtually DJ for each other, has taken a massive step toward becoming more legitimate: The company has announced today at SXSW that it reached agreements with all four major American labels -- Sony BMG, Universal, EMI and Warner.

This feels like an all-time record speed launch -- when we launched we really didn't come at this from the music industry, it was all new to us, said co-founder of Turntable Seth Goldstein in a Billboard report. Our model is unique -- we're not a radio service, not an on-demand service. We have interesting aspects that really require some out-of-the-box thinking.

The deal is a huge boost for Turntable, who reached an all-time high of 224,682 unique visitors (an important metric for any web-based company) in July 2011 according to Compete statistics. The all-time high of unique visitors occurred just two months after the website launched.

Now that Turntable is entirely legal, it is likely do a better job of trying of recapturing its initial success. The company has been slowly growing its unique visitors over the past several months; however, the company is nowhere near its peak traffic numbers. According to Compete statistics, Turntable captured 48,764 unique visitors in January.

Read Write Web, albeit before Turntable's latest announcement, speculated about whether Turntable was just a summertime fad. Turntable.fm was such a craze that it gave rise to a number of copycat services pretty quickly. Group listening in general became one of the biggest trends in online music last year, said a RRW report. But many have wondered if this particular trend has long-term staying power, or if the whole thing was just a fad.

Now that the company has jumped through the legal loopholes that will allow it to sustain long-term viability, Turntable has given itself a reason to disprove RRW's presumption. There's plenty of ground to be made up for, especially since music streaming service Spotify is garnering 1.5 million unique visitors per month.

SXSW runs through March 18, giving Turntable plenty of time to reveal more breaking news.

Stay posted for details.

Spotify SXSW