Stumbling around…

Perlson goes on to claim that payola can’t harm internet radio because consumers have so much more choice online. He says they’ll stop listening to any station that forces the wrong sort of stuff down their throats, and switch to one that forces the right sort of stuff down their throats. He also believes that because the payola songs can be targeted with precision, most listeners wouldn’t mind hearing them on their stations, similar to the way contextually relevant Google Ad Words work on web pages.

However, Perlson contradicts himself in the very next paragraph. “It could also be useful to push crossover hits across sympathetic genres,” he writes, “allowing artists the possibility of actually breaking out onto a larger stage.” Which is it? Either the payola songs would fit in perfectly with a certain station, or they would not. He can’t have it both ways.

There are 10,000 commercial radio stations in the United States; record companies rely on approximately 1,000 of the largest to create hits and sell records. Each of those 1,000 stations adds roughly three new songs to its playlist each week. The indies get paid for every one: $1,000 on average for an “add” at a Top 40 or rock station, but as high as $6,000 or $8,000 under certain circumstances.That’s a minimum $3 million worth of indie invoices sent out each week.

Why does radio suck? Because most stations play only the songs the record companies pay them to

In the half-century since the original payola scandals, the music industry, the broader commercial culture, and consumer expectations have evolved to the point where the payola laws seem outmoded and backward-looking.

Sony Music — now known as Sony/BMG — has to pony up a $10 million settlement with New York’s Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

“Payola” is a contraction of the words “pay” and”Victrola” (LP record player), and entered the English language via the record business. The first court case involving payola was in 1960. On May 9, Alan Freed was indicted for accepting $2,500 which he claimed was a token of gratitude and did not affect airplay

Tags: payola, commercial bribery, soundscan, charts