In our recent Year in review (2007) for digital music, we predicted that the idea of a music flat-rate or so-called music “tax” would be one model that will be pushed hard by the major record labels in 2008. The idea:

Charge the customers of ISPs, cellphone carriers or even device manufacturers a flat-rate fee as part of their data service plan or purchase, in exchange for the right to access and possibly share music from the major record labels’ catalogs. That way, downloading is decriminalized and the recording industry is guaranteed revenue.

Of all the four major labels – Universal Music, Sony BMG, Warner, and EMI – Universal, publicly at least, has been most committed to the idea. First, by touting its own Total Music plan, and then through announcing a partnership with Nokia as part of the handset maker’s “Comes With Music” offering.

Now it seems that Warner Music has been handed the flat-rate baton.

Having already secured Universal Music’s support, Nokia is hopeful that the three remaining major labels – Sony BMG, EMI and Warner, along with around ten independents – will also sign on in time for the launch of its all-you-can-eat music download service.

Announced last December at the annual Nokia World conference, “Comes With Music” will enable customers to buy a Nokia device with a year of unlimited access to “millions of tracks”, and – rather surprisingly – get to keep any downloaded tracks once the twelve month subscription period ends. The only way to then continue accessing the service, however, is to purchase a new “Comes With Music” device (see our follow-up report).

This is getting a bit embarrassing. Every few days a record label stands up and announces a new digital download scheme that will revolutionize the recording industry and save the environment.

OK, maybe not save the environment. We have Al Gore for that. But definitely the record industry. Somebody needs to save the recording industry, and it can’t always be Steve Jobs, so today it’s a dude named Rolf Schmidt-Holtz.

Schmidt-Holtz is the CEO of Sony BMG, the world’s second-largest record label behind Universal Music Group and ahead of Warner and EMI. Schmidt-Holtz told a German newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, that Sony BMG is working on a subscription service that would allow customers unlimited access to the label’s entire library for a monthly fee, roughly US$9-$12.

Best of all — besides saving baby seals — the Sony BMG plan will work on all digital music players, including the ubiquitous iPod. And maybe, just maybe, if everybody behaves and stops pirating music, customers “could keep some songs indefinitely — that they would own them even after the subscription expired,” Herr Schmidt-Holtz is quoted as saying.

There used to be a time when you could only download legal digital music from the iTunes Store and a handful of little-known indie sites. Now there seems to be legal downloading on every street corner, with the record labels cutting deals with everybody except iTunes.

The latest deal to gain legitimate steam is one between MySpace and two of the top four record labels, Sony BMG and Warner. According to a report today in the News Corp.-owned New York Post — coincidentally the owner of MySpace — the social networking site is close to signing deals with Sony and Warner as it puts together MySpace Music. The venture may be announced as early as this week, the Post notes.

“Everybody’s operating with a sense of urgency to try to close it out,” an “industry insider” told the Post.

The new MySpace Music is expected to be a mix of pay-per-download and ad-supported streaming audio and video. As the Post notes, no money is expected to change hands as the labels are “trading content rights in exchange for minority equity stakes in MySpace Music and the chance to participate in the advertising revenues that News Corp. hopes to generate from the service.”