Obviously emboldened by its Blu-ray win, the entertainment giant wants a bigger slice of the music download pie.

Entertainment giant Sony has let slip that it is working on an access-all-areas type music subscription service. The news came from none other than SonyBMG CEO Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, himself. In an interview with German-language newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Schmidt-Holtz declares his preference for a monthly flat rate fee, somewhere in the vicinity of Eu6 to Eu8 ($US8 to $US10).

The service would be available to all players, including Apple’s iPod, however the service would also attached timebombs to music files so that if the subscription is not renewed, downloaded songs would no longer play.

This would require Apple licensing its FairPlay digital rights management (DRM) technology to Sony, without which, Sony’s plan for iPods wouldn’t work.

The news of Sony’s subscription plans follows rumours last week that Apple itself is in discussions with the major music labels to create a subscription service via its iTunes online store.

Any serious subscription service would require both SonyBMG and Apple to be involved – SonyBMG is one of the world’s largest labels and Apple the leading supplier of music players.

However, news of Sony’s plan would seem to put it up as a competitor to Apple so the chances of an Apple-Sony deal at least on FairPlay look remote.

DailyTech reports that Sony is also in “early discussions” with phone manufacturers such as Nokia but when Schmidt-Holtz was pressed on support for Apple’s iPhone, he would neither confirm nor deny.

Certainly, Sony’s recent win over Toshiba with its Blu-ray next-generation optical disc format wouldn’t have done its confidence any harm about taking on the lucrative but crowded digital music download market.