In response to the confusion and concerns regarding the subject of payola made at the Ghana Music Seminar 2007 (sponsored by Kafina Management) , held on Dec. 20, 2007 at the British Council; I feel compelled to share this article to bring clarity to Payola and why it “is” in fact more than legal in the U.S. 

Please feel free to share this article with other artists, musicians, and people who are interested in this controversial subject.

Why does radio suck? Because most stations play only the songs the record companies pay them to. And things are going to get worse.

Does radio seem bad these days? Do all the hits sound the same, all the stars seem like cookie cutouts of one another?



It’s because they do, and they are.

Why? Listeners may not realize it, but radio today is largely bought by the record companies. Most rock and Top 40 stations get paid to play the songs they spin by the companies that manufacture the records.

But it’s not payola — exactly. Here’s how it works.

Radio’s big bully



A complete guide to Salon’s stories on Clear Channel and the new payola

Standing between the record companies and the radio stations is a legendary team of industry players called independent record promoters, or “indies.”

The indies are the shadowy middlemen record companies will pay hundreds of millions of dollars to this year to get songs played on the radio. Indies align themselves with certain radio stations by promising the stations “promotional payments” in the six figures. Then, every time the radio station adds a Shaggy or Madonna or Janet Jackson song to its playlist, the indie gets paid by the record label.

Indies are not the guys U2 or Destiny’s Child thanked on Grammys night, but everyone in the business, artists included, understands that the indies make or break careers.

“It’s a big fucking mudball,” complains one radio veteran.

At first glance, the indies are just the people who grease the gears in a typical mechanism connecting wholesaler with retailer. After all, Pepsi distributors, for example, pay for placement in grocery stores, right?

Except that radio isn’t really retail — that’s what the record stores are. Radio is an entity unique to the music industry. It’s an independent force that, much to the industry’s chagrin, represents the one tried-and-true way record companies know to sell their product.

Small wonder that the industry for decades has used money in various ways to influence what radio stations play. The days are long gone when a DJ made an impulse decision about what song to spin.

The music industry is a $12 billion-a-year business; today, nearly every commercial music station in the country has an indie guarding its playlist. And for that right, the indie shells out hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to individual stations — and collects a lot more from the major record labels.

Indeed, say many industry observers, very little of what we hear on today’s radio stations isn’t bought, one way or another.

The indie promoter was once a tireless hustler, the lobbyist who worked the phones on behalf of record companies, cajoling station jocks and program directors, or P.D.s, to add a new song to their playlists.

Sure, once in a while the indies showed their appreciation by sending some cocaine or hookers to station employees, but the colorful crew of fix-it men were basically providing a service: forging relationships with the gatekeepers in the complex world of radio, and turning that service into a deceptively simple and lucrative business. If record companies wanted access to radio, they had to pay.

In the 1990s, however, Washington moved steadily to deregulate the radio industry. Among other things, it removed most of America’s decades-old restrictions on ownership. Today, the top three broadcasters control at least 60 percent of the stations in the top 100 markets in the U.S.

As that happened, indie promoters became big business.

Drugs and hookers are out; detailed invoices are in. Where indies were once scattered across the country, claiming a few dozen stations within a geographic territory, today’s big firms stretch coast to coast, with hundreds of exclusive stations in every major format.

In effect, they’ve become an extraordinarily expensive phalanx of toll collectors who bill the record company every time a new song is added to a station’s playlist.

And the indies do not come cheap.

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.