Nokia adds Warners to its free music download scheme

Nokia has signed up Warners to its controversial 'free' music download scheme due later in 2008

Warner Music Group is the latest major music label to sign up to Nokia's controversial 'all you can eat' download service, Comes With Music.

The move means that three of the four major music labels - Warners, Sony BMG and Universal - have backed the Comes Mith Music scheme which offers unlimited 'free' music downloads with selected Nokia handsets for 12 months. Only EMI has yet to sign up.

Comes With Music, which is due to launch in 10 countries including the UK later in 2008, is unusual in that Nokia handset owners will be able to download and play as many tracks as they want onto their mobile or their PC for a full year - and when the offer ends they will still be able to listen to their downloaded tracks. If they want to download more tracks they'll have to pay a monthly subscription.

However the downloaded tracks cannot be burnt to a CD unless you pay an extra fee and they'll never be playable on portable music players like the Apple iPod. The attraction for Nokia is that to continue to listen to your music collection you'll have to stick with a Nokia Comes With Music handset - establishing a hardware 'lock-in' to the consumer via their music.

However pundits have questioned the maths behind the deal as Nokia will be paying the music labels hundreds of millions of pounds for the rights to offer their catalogues - costs that will either be added onto the price of the handsets or come out of Nokia's bottom line.