Alrighty, I'm afraid I don't have the texts I assume you've had to read so perhaps you'll have more to add to this. I'm answering the second question since I had more concise thoughts about the answer, haha. I was a bit formal with my approach to answering it, though - hope it's not so stiff compared to your own writing that it makes your TA suspicious.
"With the rapid advancement of audio technologies and the prevalence of easily accessible media
comes increasingly heightened expectations of music. Especially noteworthy is the effect such improvements have on the music industry in terms of financial sustainability.
Within just a few decades we have almost completely discarded the need for physical copies of music in favor of digitized MP3 files; as such, there is less need for artists to focus on production costs, and in fact also less of a need for record labels as middlemen when it comes to media distribution. This potentially results in cheaper costs for the consumer. However, such ease of distribution is a double-edged sword - piracy abounds,
and artists may find that illegally circulating copies of their music inhibits the profitability of their work. This has led to an interesting
phenomenon in which some artists no longer charge money for their music - rather, they posit that only those who
enjoy what they hear need pay for it. Though such a reliance on the goodwill of their audience is daunting, it
also potentially increases the aesthetic standards to which other musicians must adhere to to succeed, as only the most talented
artists would theoretically profit from such a practice. In short, this encourages musical artists to strive to
produce better music and serves to enrich our musical culture overall."
You asked for one paragraph but you might be able to separate mine into two starting from where I begin to talk about how some artists charge on a pay-if-you-liked-it basis. Sorry if the format's weird, I typed it out in a notepad doc so you'll also need to reformat it if you're going to paste it into Microsoft Word.Good luck with the assignment~