Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has defended his company against claims of “cannibalisation” at the Financial Times music conference in London.

Recent research by the NPD Group regarding music discovery and sales cannibalisation found that while free online radio leads to a 41% increase in paid downloads, free on-demand music, such as the service provided by Spotify, leads to a 13% decrease in paid downloads.

Ek dismissed that claim at the conference, saying, “What a lot of people in the music industry talk about is cannibalisation – getting the most profitable customers to become free users. That obviously doesn’t work. But we are convinced and seeing a lot of research that actually we are doing the opposite: we are taking pirates and moving them into a legal service.”

Ek’s comments were reported by MusicAlly.