Radio Stations and Copyrighted Music

An editorial listed in the Chicago Tribune, “Radio: Pay the band” discussed the issue of how performers such as, Aretha Franklin, do not got paid when their songs broadcast on the radio, while the songwriters do. The author argues that the performers should get paid as well as the songwriters because it is their work as well. The article acknowledged the opposition by stating that if the broadcast stations pay both the performers and the song writers for their work, the stations may go out of business, or play less music, which would provide less advertising for the songs themselves. However, the author disagreed with this claim stating that, “That’s the risk musicians will take by pushing for this.”
By arguing that performers should get paid for their work, the author uses the pathos and logos approaches. Because the author does not provide his or her name or background, it cannot be argued that the ethos approach was used at all. However because the author provides many facts and reasons as to why performers should be paid, the logos approach was clearly used. In addition, at the end of the editorial the author mentions that performers should get paid for their work, which can be identified as an emotional appeal, therefore the author also used the pathos approach. This argument seems to be very successful because it uses many pieces of evidence as to why the performers should be paid, as well as using two of the three argument methods. By the end of the article I agreed with the author in that broadcasting stations should not be able to play copyrighted music unless the performer and songwriter are paid for their efforts.