1 . To stream or not to stream? That is a question facing both music listeners and musicians.

Taylor Swift made news recently by pulling her music off Spotify, the world’s biggest streaming music service and turned to iTunes downloading and stores for sales. Back in July, Swift swept the pop music industry by selling almost 1.3 million copies of her album, 1989 in its first week. In an article Swift wrote, “The music industry is not dying... it’s just coming alive.”

Her cheerful attitude surely comes from her own unique position. So far this year, Swift has made $64 million, according to Forbes. She’ll make plenty more by bringing in about 70 cents for each dollar paid to download her music. It is much more than the royalty (版税) rate paid out by Spotify of between $0.006 and $0.0084 per song stream.

According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), money from streaming on YouTube, Pandora and Spotify has helped bring in more money. But the small amount Spotify pays to musicians still caused many of them to withhold some or all of their music from the service, like artists from Beyoncé to The Beatles.

Yet for bands struggling to get by, struggling even to be heard, keeping their music off streaming services is not so easy. Such bands need to get their music out any way they can, and if they’re going to make money, they need to make their music easily accessible to listeners.

To stream or not to stream is a difficult choice for fans, too. The streaming model puts ownership (所有权) of the music in the hands of the music industry. Rather than letting you own your collection, the music business is moving toward a model similar to on-demand cable TV. Every song written is available online whenever and wherever you’d like to hear, but the problem is that you, the user, need to pay over and over again each time you stream it.

1. Why did Taylor Swift say “music industry is coming alive”?

A．Because she got a unique position in music industry.

B．Because her new album made a great offline success.

C．Because the birth of streaming brings great chances to music.

D．Because Spotify becomes the world’s biggest streaming music service.

2. What does the underlined word “withhold” in paragraph 4 probably mean?

A．Keep back.

B．Pick out.

C．Hold onto.

D．Put away.

3. What can we learn from the text?

A．Taylor Swift promotes free music streaming.

B．Streaming puts ownership of music in the hands of fans.

C．Some bands still depend on streaming for chances to be heard.

D．Fans can own music with a once-for-all pay on streaming platforms.

4. What can be a suitable title for this text?

A．The Music Industry Is Coming Alive

B．Streaming Leaves Musicians and Fans in a Dilemma

C．To Pay or Not to Pay: a Tough Choice for Music Fans

D．The Rise of Streaming: a Threat or Opportunity for the Music Industry

4 . Last weekend was terrible for awards ceremonies. The BAFTAS,defined by a painful monologue（独角戏）from Joanna Lumley, was watched by 500,000 fewer people than last year. Meanwhile,the number of 18﹣to 49-year-olds watching the Grammys has reached an all-time low.

Don't expect the Oscars to fare any better；they have lost millions of viewers since 2014. Add to the fact that comparatively few people have watched most of the nominated films and you have got a ratings time bomb.

Viewers are deserting awards shows in groups and something needs to be done. But what？Reorganize them to celebrate really popular work？That's what the Oscars put forward last year when it suggested a best popular film category﹣and it was swiftly booed（喝倒彩）out of town.

Another option would be to shorten the length of the ceremonies, but this won't work either. The Oscars recently announced plans to hide several categories in ad breaks,and the anger in some quarters（the cinematographers, makeup artists and editors who this year won't get their moment on the small screen）has been obvious.

What else can they do？ Fewer songs？ Shorter speeches？ An In Memoriam section that consists of the words： "People die： get over it"？

Fortunately, I have the perfect solution： don't televise awards shows. Just don't do it. Awards shows are the opposite of good television. They're too long and too boring because of regular and repeated patterns and too self﹣important. And by God, we should have learned by now not to give celebrities any more attention than they already have. It just makes them think that we want to hear them giving out half﹣baked opinions about Donald Trump and Brexit.

I'm not suggesting that the awards shows shouldn't happen. I'm just saying that the awards should be announced in the form of a press release at the end of the ceremony, followed by a handful of You Tube clips showing some nice outfits and a couple of speeches. That's how most of us consume them now anyway.

1. Why does the writer mention the BAFTAS and the Grammys？

A．To introduce the topic of the article.

B．To support the topic of the paragraph.

C．To attract the readers' attention.

D．To make comparison with the Oscars.

2. What does the underlined word "it" in paragraph 3 refer to？

A．The best popular film category.

B．The best actress.

C．The reorganized Oscars.

D．The deserted awards show.

3. What's the writer's opinion on awards shows？

A．Awards shows are better if shortened.

B．Awards shows are excellent television.

C．Awards shows are important to us.

D．Awards shows should be shown in another form.

4. What is the passage mainly about？

A．The bright future of awards shows.

B．What terrible awards shows.

C．Stopping the television of awards shows.

D．Boycott attention to celebrities.