By MATHEW INGRAM
According to a news release from Nokia, the mobile-phone maker now has three of the Big Four labels signed on for its upcoming "Comes With Music" service, which is expected to launch later this year (EMI hasn't signed up yet, but apparently it is planning to).

Although the terms of the deals are unknown, Nokia has reportedly paid the record companies millions of dollars for the right to offer some of their songs free for download, and will build some of that cost into the price of Nokia handsets. Warner boss Edgar Bronfman Jr. was full of visionary enthusiasm for the project: "Nokia's Comes With Music service will be a significant step forward in the evolution of digital music. It's the first global initiative to fundamentally align the interests of music companies with telecommunications companies," he said in a statement.

(Of course, Edgar Jr. was similarly enthusiastic about the benefits of a merger between Seagram and French media conglomerate Vivendi a few years ago, a deal that would eventually vaporize billions of dollars in shareholder value, along with a substantial chunk of his Montreal-based family's fortune. But I digress.)

The Nokia service will apparently allow users to listen to - and download - millions of songs from the major labels, and will even let them retain the right to listen to those songs after the year-long deal has expired.

However, while users will be able to download the songs to a PC, they won't be able to burn them to a CD without paying extra, and won't be able to move them to a portable player at all. And after the year is over, in order to get access to new music under the same terms, users will have to buy a new Nokia phone.

Will the new generation of music fans buy what Nokia is selling? I don't think so - and if they do, it won't be long before they find a way around most of those restrictions.