Nokia has renewed its attack on Apple's iTunes Store with a new service that will see music come pre-loaded onto new mobile phones from the company. The Comes With Music service will be rolled out from mid-2008 and will enable you to keep the songs even after you stop paying for the year long subscription. But there is catch - and it's a pretty big one. First, this from Nokia:

"We set out to create the music experience that people are telling us they are looking for - all the music they want in the form of unlimited downloads to their mobile device and PC," Anssi Vanjoki, executive vice president and general manager, multimedia at Nokia, said in his keynote speech this morning.

"Even if you listened to music 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you would still only scratch the surface of the music that we're making available. Comes with Music fulfils our dream to give consumers all the music they want, wherever they want it, while rewarding the artists who create it." Sounds good, so what's the problem?

Music with strings

To give Comes With Music a fighting chance against iTunes, Nokia has signed up to Total Music - an alternative music service being developed by Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony BMG and Warner Music Group (WMG). Total Music uses a subscription-based model with a difference - it enables you to keep the music you download. It even offers a fair amount of flexibility over how you can use it - you can copy tracks to your PC and up to three other handsets, for example. Now here comes the 'But':

Firstly, UMG - which is the only label providing music initially - stands to get a cut of every Comes With Music handset that Nokia sells. This is similar to the music tax it also levies on the Microsoft Zune (around five per cent). It's not clear yet whether or not other labels will also want to levy their own charges against Nokia - costs that will then be passed on to you - to secure the rights to other music content.