Federal copyright board to set digital music royalties

Royalties that digital music companies from Apple Inc. to record labels pay songwriters for selling their music as ringtones, CDs and permanent digital downloads are to be set Thursday by a federal agency. This is the first time in nearly three decades that the industry has been unable to decide the fee for sales of recorded music on its own. Apple has so strongly opposed increasing the rate, now 9.1 cents per song, that it threatened to shut down the iTunes store if the rate goes up — a move experts said was unlikely. More likely is the Copyright Royalty Board hiking the rate incrementally, in line with the fraction of a penny that it has risen every two or three years since 1981, when it was 4 cents per song.