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July 29, 2005
payola sucks
I'd never heard of the term payola before, but I did however have an inkling from a very young age of how corrupt the music industry is. My father runs a community radio station, and as a result he happened to know a bit about the music industry in general, and I distinctly remember him telling me how some music shops in Australia are ones that ARIA uses for polling to work out what singles & albums are selling well each week. Now apparently it was an open secret which stores were which, and these store managers could reliably expect gifts of household whitegoods, free stock and a bunch of other bribes from the record companies so that their product would be upfront and selling well. It's not uncommon (or at least it wasn't at the time - ~1996) for record companies to give a shop a bunch of singles and then buy them back from the shop - hence boosting "sales" figures and paying off the record shop. My perception of the record industry as this shadowy "other" body behind the scenes in the music industry was formed at around that point in time.
It's no suprise to me to find out that this sort of thing logically extends to radio stations, where the big record companies are paying DJs to play tracks to increase sales. I think I've become slightly more cynical than when I first starting hearing about these things, but I do feel it's somewhat ironic that the record industry as a whole gets up on it's high horse about "stealing music" but I feel that them stealing airtime from deserving artists is just as, if not more reprehensible.
the digital music weblog via CDM Related: Billboard: Spitzer Evidence To Be Handed Over To FCC
Posted by funnelbc at July 29, 2005 02:47 PM
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