ELA Writing Prompt

Read “Music Streaming” passage set.

Source 1 Apple pays the price - $3 billion - to buy Beats, add

swag to its catalog
1 CUPERTINO, Calif. — Apple just got more flair. The giant tech company picked up extra
swagger and song-picking savvy with its $3 billion purchase of Beats Electronics, a
headphone and music streaming company founded by rapper Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine,
one of the first recording executives to roll with the hip-hop culture.

The Industry Keeps Changing

2 The growing popularity of music streaming services such as Pandora and Spotify has been
reducing sales of songs and albums. iTunes has dominated that business for the past
decade. U.S. sales of downloaded songs slipped 1 percent last year to $2.8 billion while
streaming music revenue surged 39 percent to $1.4 billion.

3 Although Apple broke into streaming with the launch of iTunes Radio last September, the
service has not been as popular or as profitable as the company expected, according to
two people familiar with the matter. The people were not authorized to speak publicly about
the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity.

4 ITunes Radio has 40 million listeners and will continue as a free service with ads while
Beats Music will try to tap into the more than 800 million iTunes accounts to sell more
subscriptions to its customized service. Beats Music currently has more than 250,000
subscribers, Cook said. That's well below the more than 10 million paying customers that
Spotify's streaming service boasts.

5 Apple is counting on Beats to boost its status with teenagers and younger adults as it tries
to remain a leader in digital music. That industry looks much different than when Apple
reshaped the scene with the 2001 debut of the iPod.

Source 2: Are musicians going up a music stream without a fair

payout?
By Deluca, Dan

6 Music listeners have a question they must answer: to stream, or not to stream?

7 Taylor Swift made news recently by pulling her music off Spotify, the world’s biggest
streaming music service. Back in July, Swift was plotting a pop-music takeover that ended
in her selling almost 1.3 million copies of her album, "1989," in its first week.

"Music Should Not Be Free"

8 Swift is “defying retail gravity,” as former Billboard editor Bill Werde expressed it to
National Public Radio (NPR). To get a sense of her success, consider this: In the week
before the release of "1989," the top 200 albums on the Billboard chart sold a combined
total of 1.53 million copies, barely outpacing "1989."
ELA Writing Prompt

Read “Music Streaming” passage set.

9 Her upbeat attitude surely comes from her own unique position, not to mention her laser-
like focus on achieving sales goals through bonding with fans on social media.

10 However, in the Wall Street Journal piece, Swift had important points to make about the
devaluation of music. “Music should not be free,” she insisted. It certainly has value for
her. So far in 2014, Swift has made $64 million, according to Forbes. She’ll make plenty
more this year by bringing in approximately 70 cents for each dollar paid to download her
music. It is much more than the royalty rate paid out by Spotify of between $0.006 and
$0.0084 per individual song stream.

11 Many in the music industry see streaming as the only hope for increasing revenue or
income. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), money from
streaming has more than offset a decline in money brought in by paid downloads in 2014.

Artists Want A Fair Cut

12 But those tiny Spotify payouts have provoked a growing number of major acts, from
Beyoncé to the Beatles, to withhold some or all of their music from the service.

13 Patrick Carney of the Black Keys has also ranted. “My whole thing about music is: If
somebody’s making money, then the artist should be getting a fair cut of it,” he told the
Seattle Times.

14 Referring to CEO Daniel Ek, Carney said: “The owner of Spotify is worth something like $3
billion. He’s richer than Paul McCartney and he’s 30 and he’s never written a song.”

15 And this week R&B star Aloe Blacc chimed in, writing an anti-streaming piece for Wired
magazine, which tweeted out the headline: “I support Taylor Swift — streaming services
are killing music.”

16 Swift wrote: “Music is art, art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable.
Valuable things should be paid for.” That’s a noble idea that would be easier to live by if
the Internet had never happened, and of course, if the Internet had never happened, Taylor
Swift wouldn’t have 46 million followers.

Music As Spam?

17 But Swift’s larger point — that if they can afford to, musicians shouldn’t cheapen their
music by just giving it away — is correct. She wrote that she hopes artists don’t
“underestimate themselves or undervalue their art.”

Connecting With Fans

18 Swift has proved herself an expert at making those connections. And with Swift pulling her
music off Spotify, she strengthens her bond with her followers by making them have to
buy her album to prove how much they love her.
ELA Writing Prompt

Read “Music Streaming” passage set.

Source 3: Thanks to Spotify, music sales are booming in the U.S.

19 U.S. music sales grew at a fast pace for a third straight year in 2017. The primary reason
for this rapid growth was the expanding popularity of music-streaming outlets like
Spotify.

20 The latest music industry figures were released January 3 by BuzzAngle Music, a firm that
tracks U.S. music sales. The company reported that music consumption in the United
States, the world's largest music market, jumped 12.8 percent in 2017. That increase
significantly beat the 4.2 percent growth seen a year earlier.

21 On-demand streaming services are quickly replacing downloads as the most popular way
to consume music. When consumers download music on platforms like iTunes, they save
the tracks on their computers or smartphones. Streaming allows people to build playlists
of their favorite songs without having to download them. These tracks can be played online
whenever a person wants to hear them — that is, on demand.

Listeners Are Paying To Stream Music

22 BuzzAngle Music found that on an average 2017 day in the United States, 1.67 billion
songs were streamed. By comparison, only around one-third as many tracks — 563.7
million — were downloaded over the entire year.

23 Audio streaming grew by more than 50 percent in 2017, compared to the previous year.

24 In more good news for the industry, BuzzAngle Music said that 80 percent of audio
streams came through paid subscription sites. The music business has been encouraging
listeners to pay monthly rates rather than seeking out songs for free online. Apparently,
their efforts have been successful.

25 Last year's growth continues a reversal of the long-term drop in music sales. Sales first
began falling following the rise of the Internet. As the Internet developed, it quickly
became easy for people to gain music for free, often through illegal downloads.

Artists Want To Be Paid Fairly

26 Not everyone is cheering the 2017 sales figures, however. Many artists complain that
they are seeing little of the profit.

27 Wixen Music Publishing owns the rights to songs by artists such as Neil Young and The
Doors. Last week it filed a $1.6 billion lawsuit against Spotify. It argues that the Swedish
company failed to seek proper licenses as it quickly built up its catalog of 30 million
songs.

28 Geoff Barrow is a member of the band Portishead. He criticized Spotify in a recent Twitter
thread that drew attention. Barrow said it was "almost impossible to make a living"
through Spotify. The payments per song streamed are far too small, he said.
ELA Writing Prompt

Read “Music Streaming” passage set.

29 Spotify claims it has helped musicians by bringing them new audiences they wouldn’t
ordinarily have access. Having more fans helps musicians sell more concert tickets, the
company says. Increasingly, musicians make money from concert ticket sales rather than
recordings.

30 Spotify is currently the leading streaming service, but it faces a growing number of rivals.
These include the streaming services of tech giants Apple and Amazon, as well as Paris-
based Deezer and rapper Jay-Z's Tidal.

Vinyl Revival

31 While sales of full albums kept dropping in 2017, there was one big exception: vinyl.

32 Sales of vinyl albums grew by 20 percent. That healthy growth kept up the revival of the
older format, which is popular with both hardcore fans and collectors.

33 The top-selling vinyl title of the year was a soundtrack to the superhero film "Guardians
of the Galaxy." First released in 2014, it features songs by music legends such as David
Bowie and Marvin Gaye.

"Reputation" Tops The Charts

34 The taste of vinyl lovers was sharply different from mainstream choices. Pop superstar
Taylor Swift's "Reputation" was by far the top-selling album of 2017. It sold nearly 1.9
million copies.

35 Swift maximized sales by keeping "Reputation" off streaming services for its first three
weeks. Her approach is unusual, however. It can only be pulled off by major stars with a
dedicated fan base.

36 Like vinyl, cassette tapes are an older format with a new following. Sales of cassettes
more than doubled in 2017. However, at fewer than 100,000 copies sold, the format
remains a tiny part of the overall market.
 ELA Writing Prompt

Read “Music Streaming” passage set.

Writing Prompt.

Task: Music streaming has become a popular method for individuals to listen to their
favorite artists. Using the following texts, write to explain the impact that streaming services
have on the music industry.

Manage your time carefully so that you can

• read the passages;

• plan your response;
• write your response; and
• revise and edit your response.

Be sure to

• use evidence from multiple sources; and

• avoid overly relying on one source.

Your response should be in the form of a multiparagraph essay. Write your response in the
space provided.
ELA Writing Prompt

Read “Music Streaming” passage set.

ELA Writing Prompt

Read “Music Streaming” passage set.