December 2017 LSAT Section 1 Question 13

Songwriters get much of the money they earn from their songs from radio airplay. A hit song is played thousands of ti...

Sam1292 on April 17, 2020

Why is D Incorrect

Songwriters get much of the money they earn from their songs from radio airplay. {A hit song is played thousands of times, and the songwriter is paid for each play.} Only a fraction of songwriters actually achieve a hit, however, and even fewer manage to write several. {Writers of hit songs are often asked to write songs for movie sound tracks, but they sometimes decline, because although such songs frequently become hits, their writers receive single up-front payments rather than continued revenues from radio airplay.} If the statements above are true, which one of the following must be true? C: Some songs written for movie sound tracks are played on the radio thousands of times. D: Most songwriters prefer the possibility of continued income to single up-front payments for their songs. My understanding of the question is that I would be making an inference based on the above statement. I assumed that because most song writers decline writing for the movies although they have the possibility of those songs becoming a hit, the reasoning must be the compensation. I'm assuming I got this answer incorrect because I misunderstood the question stem?

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shunhe on April 17, 2020

Hi @Sam1292,

Thanks for the question! Let’s take a look at what the passage is telling us. We know that songwriters get a good amount of money from radio airplay. But only a fraction of songwriters actually achieve a hit, and even less write several hits. People who write hit songs get offers to write movie sound tracks, but deny them, since they get up-front payments as opposed to continued revenues from radio airplay.

Now we’re asked to find a statement that must be true based on the passage. Let’s take a look at (D) first. (D) tells us that most songwriters prefer the possibility of continued income to single up-front payments for their songs. Remember that this is a Must Be True question. In other words, the answer choice has to be one that is logically compelled by the information presented in the passage. The passage tells us that writers of hit songs SOMETIMES decline to write movie sound tracks, but not always, so we definitely don’t know if it’s true that MOST songwriters (at least 50%) prefer continued income to single up-front payments, since we don’t know how often this “sometimes” is. Thus, (D) is incorrect because we only know that some song writers decline writing, not most song writers.

Now take a look at (C), the correct answer. (C) tells us that some songs written for movie sound tracks are played on the radio thousands of times. This has to be true based on what we’re told in the passage. We know that movie track songs frequently become hits, and a hit song is played thousands of times, so we know that some songs are played on the radio thousands of times.

Hope this helps. Feel free to ask any further questions that you might have.