Recent Article About Radios Pay For Play AKA Payola Investigations

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In 2004, New York’s attorney general investigated pay-for-play in the radio industry. Insiders claim that the practice still lives on today.

When Bob Donnelly entered the music business as a lawyer in 1976, payola, or pay-for-play, was standard in the radio industry.

“When I first started, it was hookers and blow [to help get songs on the air],” Donnelly says. “Then that disappeared and it became sports tickets, trips, sneakers and the like. It changed over time so that it became much more sophisticated. At the end of the day, the labels still wanted hit records and the radio stations wanted cash.”

While some radio promoters today liken those days to the Wild West — a distant past — conversations with more than 30 people in the music industry familiar with the modern radio business indicate that payments to influence airplay are still a significant feature of the radio landscape. “It never went away,” says Paul Porter, a veteran of “urban” radio who discusses his experiences with payola in his 2017 book, Blackout: My 40 Years in the Record Business. “The old days of coming in [to a radio station] with a 12-inch [record] full of money [and offering] trips and cocaine are all gone. Now everything goes to LLCs and cash apps.”

“Everyone knows it’s there,” adds Allen Kovac, CEO of the rock-focused Eleven Seven Label Group. “It’s a game that should’ve gone away a long time ago. [But] it’s prevalent enough that you’re not gonna get into the Top 15 without playing that game.”

Pay-for-play is at least as old as rock itself. The first congressional hearings on payola in the radio industry were held in 1960, resulting in the prohibition of undisclosed pay-for-play. But pay-for-play did not end. Donnelly heard so many stories from fed-up artist clients about payments to DJs and radio stations that he decided to alert Eliot Spitzer, then New York’s attorney general, to the state of the industry in 2004.

Spitzer’s investigations revealed that payola was rampant in radio. To influence airplay, money and other “valuable considerations” moved among labels or middlemen known as “indie promoters” and radio stations. “It was the early stage of people using email, so [labels and radio programmers] were pretty straightforward in terms of what the deals were and the transactions that were being cut,” Spitzer tells Rolling Stone. In 2003, for example, one program director asked Columbia Records, “Do you need help on Jessica [Simpson] this week? $1,250? If you don’t need help, I certainly don’t need to play it.”

One manager, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, recently spent approximately $10,000 through a third party directly paying radio DJs in the “urban” and rhythmic formats to play a single. The payments were strategically employed to boost the singer’s spins. When a label signed the artist, the manager was able to earn his money back.

That was a relatively cheap investment. Another music-industry veteran who requested anonymity claims that he spent five times as much to try to break a record in the rhythmic format. “I bought all my spins at the right places,” he says. “We spent about $50,000.” He got around 800 plays, mostly in mix shows.

“Take a look at the Mediabase chart and look at how many people got one, two, or three spins [a week],” adds the veteran who spent $50,000 buying spins. Songs become radio hits only if they get played in bulk; a couple of spins a week is not enough for a track to become familiar to casual listeners. “How do you break a record spinning it once a week?” the veteran asks. “For $300.” A rep for Mediabase declined to comment for this article.

This is a game primarily for the rich, but playing it still has risks. For one thing, it’s streaming, not radio play, that drives monetization today, so labels largely don’t expect a direct return on their investment. Instead, they hope that the radio exposure they are shelling out for at high prices will boost clicks on Spotify or Apple Music.

But the fate of pay-for-pay-like practices may ultimately be tied to the health of radio itself. “As long as [radio] maintains that hold on breaking new artists [and] new music, there’s always going to be a competition for those limited number of spots on their airplay list,” says Donnelly.

“People are just going to do whatever they have to do to get a play.”

 

Full article at Source:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/radio-stations-hit-pay-for-play-867825/

 

So yes, payola exists. Even now.

[whore 11,447]

We been knew 

[Brie Candy 18,642]

not shocked

[Anderson123 38,754]

[dek0de 1,325]

Only $50,000?

[Monsterious 26,867]

wish Gaga would do this secure that next #1 

[RAMROD 110,124]

9 minutes ago, Loeppke said:

We been knew 

 

4 minutes ago, Brie Candy said:

not shocked

 

1 minute ago, Alan123 said:

 

At least some of those deluded people can't say otherwise calling it a myth now 

 

Just now, VENSAINT said:

Only $50,000?

No. It depends on how much you willing to shell out. The bigger the better. No fixed price.

[Lighter 15,376]

I mean would anyone steal bother with radios? Streams will bring you top spot not radio impressions 

[Gagaism 12,000]

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Lighter said:

I mean would anyone steal bother with radios? Streams will bring you top spot not radio impressions 

But radio is still a very valuable asset to have because radio => people hearing your song => streams

[RAMROD 110,124]

2 minutes ago, Lighter said:

I mean would anyone steal bother with radios? Streams will bring you top spot not radio impressions 

"labels largely don’t expect a direct return on their investment. Instead, they hope that the radio exposure they are shelling out for at high prices will boost clicks on Spotify or Apple Music."

[Biggest Fan 988]

So labels pay alright. 

 

what if a song is so good and the artist doesn’t pay the radio

Who decides to play that popular song ?

[Musicisfreedom 5,837]

Rock bands should do this and bring harder music back to the mainstream

[River 117,775]

"payola is illegal it doesn't exist"

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23 minutes ago, Biggest Fan said:

So labels pay alright. 

 

what if a song is so good and the artist doesn’t pay the radio

Who decides to play that popular song ?

I suppose the radio will play them but the one who pays still got more frequency