EMI planning to join Nokia for new music/phone program

Reuters reported yesterday that privately held EMI Group plans to join Vivendi's Universal Music Group and offer songs in Nokia (NYSE: NOK) mobile devices as part of the new "Comes with Music" program. The report comes out of Nokia's home country, Finland, but since Universal's commitment bridges international divisions, it is likely the EMI connection will as well.

The "Comes with Music" program was first announced in December 2007, with Universal fully on board to offer unlimited access to millions of Digital Rights Management-free tracks for a year, and any tracks on the phones at the end of the year becoming the consumers'. Clearly, the program has a major upside in that the end of a subscription does not mean music tracks are going to disappear, something that always seems to be at the fore of subscription-based music plans. The tracks will also be available on those consumers' computers.

As nice as the plan is, the labels will not lose too much from allowing a subscription plan like that to take off. Nokia and label executives are banking on the size of catalogs to combat fears that it will hurt the music industry financially. In the press release for "Comes with Music", Nokia's Executive Vice President for Multimedia stated, "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."

With two major labels on board, the "Comes with Music" program is sure to be on the right track to succeed when it is launched later this year. The only worry that likely remains is whether any other digital store will initiate a better or similar plan to increase sales.