iTUNES NOT CLOSING DOWN

According to RollingStone.com, the Copyright Royalty Board will not be raising the online royalty rates for song publishers as originally threatened. That means that Apple’s online music retailer iTunes will not be closing down, but if the board had decided to raise rates, Apple’s profits could have been cut by 300-million dollars over the next five years, which may have meant the end of the digital store. Aram Sinnreich, a music-industry analyst, tells Rolling Stone, “Apple doesn’t make its money from selling iTunes songs, and it’s a break-even business anyway. Let’s say Apple agreed to keep half of it and [publishers] agreed to keep half of it — it would make a dent, but it wouldn’t cause them to go out of business.”