The Copyright Royalty Board defines among other things the royalties that online music store have to pay per sold track to the Majors or right owners. One of topic of the discussion was linked to the recent request made by the National Music Publishers' Association to increase royalties from 9 cents to 15 cents per track.
Last year, apple announced that with such increase, the Company will not make any money out of its online store and would then close it down as the unified price per track can not be discussed. Facing such reaction from the leading online store, the Copyright Royalty Board decided last year to maintain royalties to 9 cents per track, and renewed it too for the coming year. However, the relationships between Apple and music Majors remain difficult: the leader of online music stores (80% market share) is a new source of revenues for Majors, however it does not compensate the lost of income linked to the lower usage of physical media.
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