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  3. Below are two excerpts on an important concern of music industry: whether it

Below are two excerpts on an important concern of music industry: whether it

游客2024-11-08  6
问题    Below are two excerpts on an important concern of music industry: whether it is correct to share music without paying.
   Read them carefully and write an essay of no less than 300 words, in which you should:
   1. summarize the opinions in both excerpts;
   2. give your comment.
   Excerpt 1
                 Taylor Swift: "Music Is Art, and Art Should Be Paid for"
   Taylor Swift, who describes herself as an "enthusiastic optimist, " offered up a sunny outlook on the future of the music industry in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed. The success of recorded music, in her opinion, comes down to finding the proper price point for music and for keeping music fans interested by surprising them. She wrote. "My hope for the future, not just in the music industry, but in every young girl I meet...is that they all realize their worth and ask for it."
   At its core, the value of an album amounts to the quantity of the "heart and soul" its creator put into it, Swift wrote. But in her opinion, despite the fact that piracy has drained the record industry’s assets, music is valuable and worth the price of admission. "Music is art, and art is important and rare, " she wrote. "Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It’s my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album’s price point is. I hope they don’t underestimate themselves or undervalue their art."
   Elsewhere, Swift preaches that the music that people are buying are records that "hit them like an arrow through the heart or have made them feel strong or allowed them to feel like they aren’t alone in feeling so alone." She believes that fans look at music much like they look at relationships, with some amounting to "a passing fling" while others are meant to be treasured.
   Although she described herself as an optimist early in the article, she did point out that she was aware of changing times. Fans now opt for selfies over autographs, and with the importance of social media, she’s seen trends changing around the entertainment industry. That social media relationship with fans is important — she credited her MySpace presence as an important part of her getting a record deal in 2005 — and she predicts more artists will get deals based on their interaction with fans.
   Excerpt 2
                      Why Music Should Be Free
                                                            By Brett McCracken
   It’s been one of the biggest debates of the first decade of the 21st century: Is it OK to download music for free when you can buy it in other places? In my opinion, the future of music is going to be FREE. Yes, free.
   For all the worry, complaining, and lawsuits about copyright and "intellectual property" infringement, there are increasing numbers of people who suggest that the benefits of an open-source mindset outweigh the negatives. Lawrence Lessig, copyright guru and Stanford law professor, is one such voice. In his book, Free Culture, Lessig argues that digital technology enables a new sort of democratic creativity in which many can "participate in the process of building and cultivating a culture that reaches far beyond local boundaries." Giving things away for free, letting the audience share and remix and consume things as it sees fit, is an advantage to the collective strength of the culture economy.
   Another intellectual champion of "Free" these days is Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine. In his new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, Anderson describes the rise of "freeconomics" and argues that "free" is not a thing to be feared for those who want to make money; rather, it’s a thing to be embraced.
   Free, says Anderson, "is a word with an extraordinary ability to reset consumer psychology, create new markets, break old ones, and make almost any product more attractive."
   And it doesn’t mean profitless. It just means that "the route from product to revenue" is more indirect. It means that Wal-Mart might lure you into its stores with a $12 below-cost DVD, with the completely reasonable hope that you will spend $100 on other stuff while you’re there. It’s called a loss-leader.
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答案    The musical industry has been seriously troubled by piracy, and people are engaged in heated debate about whether music should be free in this Internet era. In her article, the pop star Taylor Swift wrote that music as a rare art should not be free, and music industry will succeed if it can find a proper price point and can keep attracting listeners. The price depends on the effort musicians put in their work. To attract listeners, musicians should use social media to engage listeners in long-term relationship. But the author in the second excerpt holds a different opinion. He points out that "open-source" mindset can bring many benefits. Free music can engage listeners to cultivate a new culture, and in business sense, free goods can create a new way to profit, like the loss leader in supermarket.
   These two opinions are obviously contradictory, and I personally side with the first one. Swift has voiced her view as a practitioner in the industry. She was very modest by asking for a proper price, and her suggestions of valuing long-term relationship and making full use of social media tools are very practical. The second excerpt, however, is too far-fetched. The writer quotes two authors to support his argument, but none of them are as familiar with music as Swift. The first author suggests that if music is given free, the general public will be involved in the creation of music, but he fails to notice that music creation demands talent, which most listeners do not possess. The second author suggests free as an indirect way to earn profit, and cites loss leader in supermarket as a proof. This analogy does not work, because if music is free, that equals to a situation where supermarkets give everything away for free. Besides, goods in supermarket will be consumed sooner or later, but music, once downloaded, can be listened to forever.
   To put it in a nutshell, music should not be given for free. People should respect the efforts of musicians, and musicians should work hard to build lasting relations with music fans.
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