Two leading companies announced they would join their forces to bring music fans a brand new program called Comes with Music. Nokia, the world’s most powerful mobile phone maker, and Universal Music Group, the biggest record label of all, announced yesterday that they would be partners in a move that would probably become a real rival for Apple’s iTunes service and not only.

Comes with Music will offer users mobile phones made by Nokia that will come bundled with the right to download an unlimited number of Universal Music Group’s songs for a year. Although the Finnish cellphone maker hasn’t yet said what phones will be offered through this service, and how much they will cost, Comes with Music is likely to become a highly popular service among music fans.

The new program is set to be launched in the second half of 2008. Until then Nokia hopes to bring in other labels as well, so that its users could have a wide range of music tracks to choose from.

Comes with Music represents a new step towards an older idea that Universal has been pushing, called Total Music. According to this program, a wide range of consumer products such as computers, mobile phones or MP3 players could include the right to download and listen to music. Although Universal has been in talks with some important companies such as Microsoft, for example, it seems that only Nokia decided to actually implement this idea in its products.

As part of Universal’s larger program, Nokia’s Comes with Music is likely to become the first music program that will satisfy artists, labels and users.