Remember Nokia's utopian / not-so-free and crippled "free" Comes with Music offering? We've been in contact with Nokia who'd like to clarify the service. According to Nokia, Comes with Music is, "completely independent from the Universal music store." Nokia further distances themselves by stating that, "Universal was simply the first of these to publicly sign on. The fact that there are some similarities shows how the industry is thinking about the future of digital music - but its not a sign of any direct linkage between the offerings." So, now we know what it isn't, but we still don't know exactly what it is. Regardless, anything can happen between now and the launch in "mid 2008" -- an eternity on a digital music evolution timeline. Perhaps the lack of detail is Nokia's way of farming public opinion before the details are announced. Wouldn't be a first.

If mama taught us one thing about free offers, it's read the fine print. Unfortunately, it was missing from Nokia's unusually tight-lipped "Comes with Music" announcement yesterday. Fortunately, Ars Technica unearthed the dirty details for us. Nokia's service is actually a first to fit under Universal's Total Music plan whereby carriers or device manufacturers tithe Universal a fee of about $5 per month for each device sold. While it appears free to end users, the cost is baked into the handset and/or data plans from your friendly neighborhood carriers. Oh, and it's slathered in DRM -- PlaysForSure DRM in fact making your tracks incompatible with both Zunes and iPods. Burning a CD will require an "upgrade purchase" for the tracks you received for free. Look, we don't mind paying for tracks, in fact, we expect to. But all this underhanded sneakiness is just silly. This is not the future (at least we hope not).