Apple's victory: No music royalty hike. Now what?

Does this mean it's a moot point, that my blog post this morning - Could royalty rate hike force Apple to reconsider variable pricing? - is no longer relevant?

The Copyright Royalty Board has denied a request by a music publishers association to increase royalties for songwriters and publishers and froze it at the current 9 cents. So, Apple wins, iTunes didn't shut down and Steve Jobs can leave the fixed pricing model alone and forget all of that variable pricing nonsense. Right?

Maybe not. Under certain circumstances, I think a variable pricing model works. Look no further than the HBO and NBC examples. Spin it anyway you want, but a compromise was reached. The landscape is changing. There's more and more premium content on the Web - outside the walls of iTunes - and the mobile landscape has been picking up steam. If Apple wants to stay competitive, it may find that some form of variable pricing can work.

I'm not saying that, as a consumer, I want to pay more. But for the right content, I might.