Again, Apple would rather close iTunes, the fulcrum of its iPod/iPhone franchise–and a service that Billboard estimates generated $1.9 billion in revenue last year–than absorb a 6-cents-a-track royalty increase or pass it on to consumers.

Somehow I doubt it. Even if iTunes vice president Eddy Cue did tell the CRB that Apple might do just that if the board agrees to the increased royalty rates proposed by the NMPA. “If the [iTunes music store] was forced to absorb any increase in the … royalty rate, the result would be to significantly increase the likelihood of the store operating at a financial loss–which is no alternative at all,” Cue wrote in a statement submitted to the CRB last year. “Apple has repeatedly made it clear that it is in this business to make money, and most likely would not continue to operate [the iTunes music store] if it were no longer possible to do so profitably.”

But of course it is possible to do so profitably. Especially if you pass the increase in royalty rate along to the consumer and the blame for that increase on to the NMPA with the astonishingly well-timed release of a sensationalist 18-month-old quote.