http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2001/03/14/payola/index.html
Pay for play
Why
does radio suck? Because most
stations play only the songs the record
companies pay them to. And things are
going
to get worse.
- - -
- - - - - - - - -
By
Eric Boehlert
March
14, 2001 | 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.
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.
Next page | An ominous new
alliance
1, 2, 3, 4
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