The only preexisting recordings that are transferred onto

EXPLANATION FROM Fox LSAT

There’s a big hole in this argument. Shocker. We know that record companies will only put stuff on CD that they think will sell. And we know that few classic jazz recordings are played on the radio. The big hole is the difference between “not played on the radio” and “companies don’t believe they will sell.”

The conclusion is, “Therefore most classic jazz recordings will not be transferred to CD.” We’re asked to make the argument’s conclusion “follow logically,” which means “prove the argument’s conclusion.” The only way to prove the conclusion is to bridge the gap between “few classic recordings are played on the radio” and “companies don’t believe they will sell.” My prediction is, “Record companies never believe anything that doesn’t play on the radio will sell.” If that’s true, then the argument seems pretty sound.

A) I guess this strengthens the argument, but it doesn’t prove the argument. If this were true, it’s still possible that record execs actually love all classic jazz recordings, and believe all of them will sell! Maybe there are simply “few” preexisting classic jazz recordings. Or maybe there are many of them, but there are so many other recordings the execs think they can profit off of, that the jazz recordings are still relatively few. Anyway, this doesn’t bridge the gap to radio play that we were looking for, so I don’t think this can be it.

B) This is just nonsense. It’s not relevant whether CDs are getting played on the radio. What’s relevant is whether what’s on the radio can get transferred to CD or not.

C) Close, but no. This is logically backward from what we’re looking for. We wanted played on radio —> execs believe it can sell. Or the contrapositive of that statement, which would be Execs believe it can sell —> it’s definitely played on the radio. This answer goes exactly the wrong way. It says “played on radio —> execs believe it can sell.” That can only be used to prove that execs do believe something can sell. Even if it’s true, it can’t be used against classic jazz. Just because everything on the radio is something that execs believe will sell doesn’t mean that everything not on the radio is something they believe won’t sell.

D) What? It’s not relevant what anyone is “interested in.” Motivations are not the issue here.

E) Yep. This is exactly what we wanted: played on radio —> execs believe it can sell. If this is true, then classic jazz is ****, because it’s currently not played on the radio, therefore the execs don’t think it will sell, therefore they surely aren’t going to put it on CD. This is our answer. Note that it’s extremely close to C, but the elements are reversed.

Our answer is E.