The Copyright Royalty Board has made its decision when it comes to the royalty rate for CDs and music downloads from places like iTunes: it will stay the same. The CRB also established a rate for ringtone purchases for the first time at a ridiculous 24 cents a song. Music publishers may also now seek a 1.5 percent late fee per month from distributors that don’t pay up on time. The CRB also reaffirmed a decision from last week about royalty rates for subscription and streaming services.
Yes, it looks like many popular online music stores, and Apple’s iTunes store in particular, dodged a bullet. Who are we kidding there was never any real danger that Apple was ever going to shut down iTunes, no matter what a vice president at Apple tried to hint at.
Could a 66 percent raise in the royalty rate have caused Apple to change the iTunes business model? Sure. Prices may have been raised for music or iTunes could have even gone with subscriptions, but the service would have remained intact.
iTunes is a key component in the Apple machine. While the company doesn’t make a huge amount of money from the store, it keeps the iPods and now iPhones moving off of the shelves. iTunes provides the content that make the devices what they are.
Tags: itunes