Music Argument: Final Draft and Additional Invention Technique.

Invention Technique: Brainstorming

My topic was music should be accessible to everyone. I thought brainstorming would help with this assignment because I knew very little about evidence that could support my point of view. I thought that writing everything I knew or thought about the topic would help me get started.


Final Draft

For this assignment, we had to pick a topic related to music and use evidence to persuade the audience. I chose to talk about the reasons why music should be free. I talked about the Napster scandal, artists making most of their money by touring, music is a medium of expression, and YouTube ads throughout the years.

Here is my final draft:

Jesus Arevalo Merino

Deana Nall

English Composition I

10 November 2020

Music Should be Accessible to Everyone

            We listen to different types of music depending on our mood. There are thousands of songs that describe feelings and emotions we are feeling now or that we felt before. There are also many songs that describe the experiences we lived in the past. When we are going through hard times, we usually listen to something we can relate to because it almost feels like we are sharing our emotions with someone and that makes us feel better. Most artists write their songs based on past experiences and try to make them as relatable as possible, but why do we pay to listen to someone describe emotions we feel ourselves? Why do we have to pay to listen to their music on platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music if we can just listen to them for free on YouTube (watching two or three ads before each song)? Music is a medium of expression: therefore, it should be accessible to everyone.

            Another reason why music should be free is that free music would serve as an advertisement for the musician’s tours. People are reluctant when it comes to purchasing something they have never tried before because if they do not like what they bought, they would consider it a waste of money. If music was free, they would be able to enjoy it and consider whether they would like to attend one of the artist’s concerts or not.

            It is a fact that musicians make most of their money by touring. Just to set an example: Justin Bieber’s song “Boyfriend” is the fourth best selling download of all time. Bieber only made about $83,000 while the label made $390,000. Now if you look at Justin Bieber’s tour, he made about $52 million. The fourth best selling download of all time only gave the artist a profit of less than $100,000 while he made more than $50 million in his tour. Comparing both figures, the amount of money Justin Bieber made through iTunes is basically nothing compared to the amount of money he made while on tour. What is the point of artists making us buy their music if they make most of their money when they go on tours? Do they really need the money from our purchases or are they just greedy and like to be overpaid? (Van Buskirk, 2012).

            In 1999, a young computer programmer named Shawn Fanning and his brother John Fanning created a very simple and free online file-sharing application that focused on MP3 audio files called Napster. On the said platform, people could find all types of music genres in the MP3 format. The songs on the platform usually originated from CDs, vinyl records, and analog cassette tapes. It did not take long for Napster to become extremely popular and reach about 80 million registered users. Colleges even had to block the use of said platform because of the network congestion caused by the many students who used it at once (Harris, 2019).  This was a great initiative that made art in the form of sound accessible and free for everyone, but not for long. The band Metallica filed a lawsuit against Napster after a leaked recording of one of their songs was uploaded to the application. The band was supported by everyone in the music industry while millions of college students supported Napster after falling in love with it. Napster lost the lawsuit because what they were doing was considered illegal. Napster shut down in 2001 (Nilay, 2015).

            Listening to free music is still possible thanks to YouTube, only if you are willing to listen to a couple of ads before each song. There was a time when YouTube did not force you to watch ads. YouTube was launched in December 2005. In 2006, YouTube was purchased by Google after the company saw the video site’s huge potential. In 2007, in-video ads appeared on the platform for the first time and by 2009 there were seven different formats of ads all over the video site. Google has been introducing new formats of ads ever since and the number of ads on the website and mobile app has increased in the past few years. Just like Spotify and Pandora, YouTube also has a premium option that does not show ads, but just like everything else that says premium, we have to pay for it and not all of us are able to pay for that premium service (Nicholas, 2011).

            Music can be made by anyone. Pick random words and a random rhythm or melody; it probably will not be good, but it is still music. Music has been an art of expression since the beginning of humanity; Back when people came up with songs and sang them just to entertain others expecting nothing in return. Why did that have to change? Artists should only make people pay for attending their concerts and not for listening to their songs online. They make most of their money by performing live anyway. Attending a concert is optional and people who have the means and really want to go see an artist will pay to see them, but access to an artist’s music should not be limited to certain people. We’re all humans, we all enjoy music, and we all should be able to enjoy music regardless of our socioeconomic status.

           

           

           

           

           

Works Cited

Harris, Mark. “The History of Napster: Yes, It's Still Around.” Lifewire, 18 Nov. 2019, www.lifewire.com/history-of-napster-2438592.

Jackson, Nicholas. “Infographic: The History of Video Advertising on YouTube.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 3 Aug. 2011, www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/infographic-the-history-of-video-advertising-on-youtube/242836/.

Patel, Nilay. “Metallica Sued Napster 15 Years Ago Today.” The Verge, The Verge, 13 Apr. 2015, www.theverge.com/2015/4/13/8399099/metallica-sued-napster-15-years-ago-today.

Van Buskirk, Eliot. Six Reasons Why Recorded Music Should Be Free. 21 Apr. 2012, gizmodo.com/six-reasons-why-recorded-music-should-be-free-5903937.


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