Q13 - Songwriters get much of the money they earn

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Inference (Must be true)

Stimulus Breakdown:
A big source of songwriting revenue is getting a hit song played on the radio, which only happens to a tiny fraction of songwriters. When these hit-makers get asked to do movie music, they sometimes decline because they would get an up-front payment rather than the normal radio revenue.

Answer Anticipation:
What else could we figure out or say from this?

The friction point, to me, was why the hit songwriters would turn down the movie offer. We can infer that they expect to make more money via the radio route than they do via the upfront movie route. But SOME money is better than NONE. So even if movies pay me less than radio, wouldn't I still want to write a song for a movie?

It seems like, combining what we heard before ... "hits are rare, and MULTIPLE hits are even more rare", these songwriters are thinking to themselves, "No way am I giving you this hit song for your movie. This might be the only hit song I ever write! I need to make sure I get this hit song bringing in radio revenue, rather than squander my possibly only hit song on smaller, upfront movie money."

Correct Answer:
C

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) We can't infer that, "if you haven't written a hit song, you receive ZERO revenue from radio airplay." You might receive tiny amounts of revenue from a non-hit song. You might have inherited the rights to some other songwriter's radio royalties.

(B) This is insanely extreme. This paragraph does not constitute proof that every single songwriter who wrote for a movie soundtrack had a hit song played thousands of time.

(C) YES, this is loveably weak. Could we prove that at least one song written for a movie sound track got played on the radio thousands of times? We know that "songs written for movie sound tracks frequently become hits" and we know that "a hit song is played thousands of times". So, yes! We can combine the provided facts to derive this statement.

(D) We wouldn't be able to prove any claim about "more than 50% of songwriters".

(E) We don't have any information that lets us prove that at least one songwriter earns 100% of her income from radio airplay.

Takeaway/Pattern: The sort of thinking I did in reaction to the paragraph is the sort of thinking that's rewarded in Inference-Most Supported questions: it's more holistic, gist-y, and at times a wee bit speculative. This question is Must Be True, so we need to find an answer choice we can logically derive from the available facts.

The weaker a claim is, the easier it is to prove it.
"Any", "All", "Most" in A/B/D are quick ways to suspect those answer choices will be wrong.

#officialexplanation

[HuiF923]

Thanks for your explanation, but here is one thing that I'm confused about: the argument says "A hit song is played thousands of times, and the songwriter is paid for each play ", however, to write a hit song for movie soundtracks, the writers receive only single up-front payments.

So if answer choice C is true, which means the hit song the songwriter writes for movie soundtracks is played on the radio, then how exactly is the songwriter paid for the hit? Thanks!