题干
In the early times, the music industry was terrified of taping (用磁带录音), thinking that customers would just copy music, or record from the radio. But that never really happened, at least not enough to cause any real hardship to anyone in the music business.
The same argument arose over technologies like MiniDiscs and recordable CDs. But the thing that terrified the music industry more than anything else was the arrival of services like Napster, which allowed people to share music over the Internet without costing them anything. The music industry was shocked; it saw people exchanging (交换) digital copies that didn’t degrade (削弱) the quality with each transfer, something that stopped tapes being a huge threat.
But it wasn’t the Internet that killed the music industry. In fact, everything is still looking optimistic for many musicians. Taylor Swift has had a good year, and her latest album is likely to make her very wealthy indeed. There is always going to be public demand for music.
However, the technology will simply destroy the record company. The reason is simple. Record companies are a man in the middle that simply doesn’t need to exist anymore. The same way we buy our flights direct, and do our shopping online and have things delivered from Amazon instead of going to a local shop. We have always been willing to enjoy cost reductions at the expense of the middleman, and the record companies are that kind of middleman.
What does the record industry offer? Well, surprisingly little these days. It used to be the case that record companies would go and find new talents. Of course this still happens, but more likely is that an artist will be discovered by the public through YouTube, or even from friends on Facebook or Twitter. Record companies also used to have an important role in producing the music. But countless artists are making their own way through software or any of the other amazing music apps, without any help from the record companies.
【小题1】What is Napster in the second paragraph most probably?| A．A MiniDisc. | B．A CD player. |
| C．A piece of software. | D．A tape recorder. |
| A．It was hard to transfer. | B．It was strictly controlled. |
| C．It didn’t save much money. | D．It couldn’t maintain the quality of music. |
| A．the Internet won’t destroy the music industry |
| B．the musicians will benefit a lot from the Internet |
| C．the sales of albums are badly affected by the Internet |
| D．the demand for music will change due to the Internet |
| A．They will sell latest albums online. |
| B．They will be useless in the Internet society. |
| C．They will cut the expense on producing the music. |
| D．They will go and find new music talents through the Internet. |
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