An Apple executive supposedly has warned that the company will close down the iTunes Music Store if a government board today approves a request by music publishers to increase their per-song royalties to 15 cents per track (from nine). The hike would make selling 99-cent downloads unprofitable, "and Apple likes making money," says Listening Post. The music publishers making the request represent songwriters; separately 70 cents from every song goes to record labels, points out Buzzgrinder. Apple is suggesting an 8 percent (not cents per song) royalty to artists, says Apple Insider. Closing down is the extreme and "nuclear" option, says The Unofficial Apple Weblog. 

The situation just shows how utterly screwed up the music industry is, says Last100. Apple would be insane to do shutter the store, says Cult of Mac. But wait! Cult observes that the threat about closing was submitted to the board last year. Today, Apple probably would just just raise its prices. The whole episode makes Apple look bad, says Apple Gazette: "Coming out against artists and threatening to shut the store down is just plain bad press." All on a day when the company reported giving out $122 million in bonuses to execs, World of Apple reports.

Separately, Google has revamped its Blog Search page to make it more like Google News or TechMeme in clustering related newsy blog posts. "What took so long?" asks Mark Evans. "Google...has a funny habit of letting some of its assets gather dust." Marketing Pilgrim says it puts Techmeme on notice. But Matthew Ingram says both have their charms; he likes TechMeme's organizational scheme, "even if I don't really understand how it operates." Matt Cutts delves into distinctions, saying TechMeme uses "very reputable" blogs while Google is less selective/more inclusive. "Every discovery site gives you a different lens," says Cutts. How true. Nothing against robots and algorithms. but for the "best of blogs" compilations we assemble here at Blogs.com, the secret sauce is a little thing we like to call live human editors.