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Payola: Another Brick in the Wall
Pink Floyd's The Wall set the standard for amazing stage shows. It was the kind of thing that makes me wish I'd lived in L.A. or New York in 1980 (and been out of grade school, I guess). In February 1980, they played five sold-out L.A. shows, inflatable pig, airplane and all, the epicenter of cool. The double album was number one and would stay there for four months.
But although you can hear "Another Brick in the Wall, Part Two" played on L.A. oldie stations today, at the time, you wouldn't have heard it on any station in the city. Total blackout. The record labels used a network (creatively called The Network) through which they exerted control over which songs got on the air.
But in 1980, The Network was in revolt.
To understand why it even existed, we have to go back to Alan Freed's Rock and Roll Show in 1960. One of the first rock'n'roll DJs, Freed was busted in 1960 for taking $2,500 in bribes to play records. He claimed the money was just a thank-you with no influence, but he still went down. He only paid a small fine, but his career was ruined and he died soon after.
As a result of the scandal, Congress passed a law against "payola" in 1960. We'll get into fine ethical distinctions later, but basically a radio station that secretly takes money to spin a song is guilty of payola.
Note that just coming out and admitting a spin was bought is perfectly legal: if that Limp Bizkit play was paid for, just say so and your station is home-free.
Break the law and you might be fined up to $10,000. Payola is a misdemeanor. Theoretically, someone might spend up to a year in jail, but according to Hit Men , published in 1990, nobody has ever spent a single day behind bars.
There have been convictions, yes. Last year, after the L.A. Times turned up some evidence, Clear Channel Communications paid an $8,000 fine for promoting a Bryan Adams single and billing his label. The bill, by way of comparison, was for $237,000.
Clear Channel did well over $1 billion in revenue last quarter and has almost $50 billion in assets. "During the first quarter of 2001, we acquired 126 radio stations in 36 markets...."
But convictions are few and far between, partly because of the layers created between the labels and the stations. Post-Freed, a niche job was created to, essentially, be the go-between from the labels to the radio stations.
The job title is "independent promoter."
The promoters work for the labels. Each week, they talk to the program directors of radio stations in their region, and try to convince the stations' program directors [PDs] to add the labels' songs to the playlist.
And competition is fierce. There are only about 30 slots that get heavily played on any given station, and most of them carry songs over week-to-week. Ten new songs in a week would be heavy turnover; usually it's much fewer, and all the labels are fighting for those slots.
The question is how the promoters "convince" the program directors. By building a relationship with each PD, based on trust and knowledge of each station's market? Or by bribes, paid in dollars or some other currency?
The Network, a small cabal of promoters working together, became famous in the early 1980s for making or breaking songs, depending on how well they were paid. That's where "Another Brick in the Wall" comes into the story. After years of lean revenue, combined with rising costs in fees paid to the Network, CBS experimented with cutting them off.
And CBS got burned. The hit single from the number-one album in the country, in a market of three million, was blacked out. While the band was playing sold-out shows, not one of the city's four big Top-40 stations would play the 45.
Shortly after Pink Floyd's last show, the promoters were rehired, and within hours the song was back on the radio (top of the charts for weeks). It was pretty clear who owned the air.
How much money was CBS trying to save? Here's a quote from 1983, which I find amusing because the speaker is John Gotti's second-in-command -- a mob underboss who can appreciate a good racket when he sees it:
"That kid in California came in to see me, said ... they give him fifty thousand to a hundred thousand to push a record. The company, they pay you, just to make a record on the air, you know..."
A lot of money. This explains why CBS wanted to try it again, testing the promoters the next year as well. In early 1981, the company's labels boycotted them entirely. In retaliation, The Network targeted "Turn Me Loose," the first single by the new band Loverboy. After breaking into the Billboard charts with a star, it rose quickly, but peaked only at number 37 before falling off the bottom.
The next target was The Who's "You Better You Bet." Its appearance was even more promising, appearing at number 63 with a superstar. But it peaked at 18 and fell off the charts quickly.
CBS was convinced. Its boycott began to crack, and within months it ended.
By 1986 the abuses had grown serious enough to merit an investigative report by NBC. Calling the indie system "The New Payola," they uncovered evidence of The Network bribing DJs with cash and cocaine, and threatening them with violence. Senator Al Gore launched a Senate probe. And the RIAA quickly issued a short statement announcing that they would not tolerate illegal activity, but denying any wrongdoing (and reminding everyone that they had done Live Aid the year before).
In reality, the labels were glad for the coverage. It gave them the chance they needed to take the promoters down a few pegs, saving them all a great deal of money. In a few weeks, all the labels had joined in a boycott. Nobody knows real dollar amounts, but The Network's income, probably measured in the tens of millions, dropped drastically.
And since 1986, things have been different. But are we right back now where we started? The president of RCA Records claimed in 1987 that his industry had paid $50 to $60 million a year to the promoters. Last week's L.A. Times story (go read it) claims it's now a "$100-million-a-year trade."
We've come a long way since Alan Freed and his twenty five hundred bucks.
I talked last week with Woody Houston, a PD for the market leader Top-40 station in my hometown. (Disclosure: the company that owns his station competes with Clear Channel.)
Woody has seen examples of corruption, but nothing like some of the abuses of the 1980s -- maybe because we're not in a big city. He's had promoters offer to pay his way to conferences, but he's turned them down. Company policy is to fire anyone who takes such an offer, even though that's pretty small-time compared to some of what's been documented.
I described the L.A. Times story to him, and asked him to try to clarify where the line gets drawn, ethically:
"If Clear Channel is using those dollars for promotional support -- let's say Interscope wanted to put $2500 behind Smashmouth -- if they're buying T-shirts that have my call letters on the front, I don't see a problem.
"There's a fine line between buying airplay and promotion. If they're taking the thousand dollars that they got for 25 spins and not using it to support the record, that's wrong. If they just give the money away on the air, that's wrong -- that's the ethics of it."
When the system works, it does its job. You may or may not like the results -- Top-40 can't please everybody of course -- but the radio airwaves are a limited public medium that should be accountable to its listeners and advertisers, not the companies that make the product. Radio stations' PDs compete by doing their research, making the judgement calls they get paid to make, and seeing their Arbitron ratings, and advertising rates, rise or fall accordingly.
When it doesn't work, it's -- well -- it's a Wall, a barrier of moneyed inertia between new artists who want to be heard and the audience who wants to hear them.
Music has been an industry for the last hundred years, so we've never known what it might be like to strip out some of those barriers. In the next two installments, I'll throw out some ideas to kick around.
Tomorrow: part two, a look back at music distribution technology of the last 200 years.
(I mentioned Hit Men earlier. Most of my sources for the industry's history come from this 1990 book by Fredric Dannen. Its research is thorough, heavy on names, dates and places; Dannen talked to just about everybody and had a good nose for what was credible. Highly recommended if this subject interests you. He's got another book that looks good, too, with an inside story on the Hong Kong film industry.)
Update, 10:45 AM EDT: Salon ran a story on payola today too, a good one. Deja vu to 1980/81, but this time, Destiny's Child's label is not even trying to boycott the promoters, they're just scaling back how much they're paying them -- even this is considered risky.
Now we've got corporate payola. It's an institution. It's powerful, centralized corruption, ie the inevitable consequence of civilization itself. The obvious solution is to return control to the individuals.
The greatest promoter of diverse radio we've ever had was Lorenzo W. Milam, the Harold Hill and Johnny Appleseed of community radio. He has long since declared the battle lost and moved on. What we used to do doesn't happen any more. The media companies have total control of America. Luckily, so far, they have only used their power to make money.
This was on the front page of the LA Times a few days ago and presents the record industry in a much better light: http://www.latimes.com/news/front/20010531/t000045 508.html.
Why didn't this make slashdot?? It is just as newsworthy as this topic, perhaps more so because it shows a side to the industry than I and many others probably have never seen. And before you cry "bias" remember that the LA Times is one of the most liberal, anti-corporate papers in the nation.
Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters?? Please. I'm almost embarassed to be a nerd. All nerds aren't socialists. And some nerds can even understand the concept of opportunity cost.
Here are some thoughts from an actual record executive.
[ The "Story" wasn't just garnered from "Hit Men." It's the Cliff Notes version. Don't represent a condensed version of someone else's writing as a story. ]
The music industry does, indeed, work on a pay-for-play basis. Just like everything else in this country.
When you go to a supermarket, do you think what food is where is a coincidence? Those companies pay for shelf space. And prime (eye-level) shelf space is a premium.
I've dolled out payola to DJs myself. Did you know that many DJs don't get a salary? They have to raise the money themselves from advertising and other sources. They pay the station to be there. Think the station cares where it comes from?
Meanwhile, we sit in meetings, deciding what acts we will promote and how. Usually, we pick just a few--the rest get shelved. Besides, the American public is too stupid to pay attention to more than three things, anyway. This includes you. Don't think it doesn't.
There's a lot more to this than just record companies paying station managers. It's artists paying station managers. It's station managers paying labels. It's labels paying distributors. It's Distributors threatening retail stores. It's artists kissing the asses of retail chains. And you are right in the middle of it, kissing everyone's ass.
Take a look at your CD shelf. Oh, that's right. You don't feel you should have to pay for music. Look at your MP3s. I'm sure they're all unsigned bands no one's ever heard of. No? Then shut up.
And those unsigned bands you think have that much integrity? Watch what happens when I walk to up them waving a contract and a pile of money. Forget the money -- just the contract. Watch as all their ideals melt away in a signature.
But no -- they'd never do that. Except that's ever band that's ever been signed, idiot.
If you are serious about music, then someone has to pay for it. I know many of how you have this bullshit ideal that artists should work for the love their art and all that crap. You know real artists talk about? Because I used to sit in endless meetings with them, listening to their ensless whining (or their managers, who sometimes forbig their artists to speak)? Money. They want money. And I don't blame them. You do, too.
Yes, it's a shitty industry. That's part of the reason I got out of the position I was in. But if you think there's a great facade around this business you're right -- the one is the deamworld is you.
If you want something different, you need to do something. Stop watching MTV. Don't buy music from any record labels (yes, the small ones can be just as bad -- trust me). Only buy it direct from the artist. And yes, you have to buy it if the artist has not decided to give it away. Perhaps many of you are still in college or younger, and have never had to support yourself. Try it.
But you can't stop there. You have to discard the whole corporate culture that goes along with industry-mandated cool. Thing you're above that? Think again. You're simply a different market -- a different genre. I love all the idiots you lambast the "boy bands" as the domain of phillistines. Then put on the new Tool CD. It's the same fucking thing, you moron. THINK.
[ End of rant. You know I'm not giving my name. ]
During Slashdot's last discussion on (satellite) radio, one thread mentioned that DC's WWDC ("DC 101") and WHFS ("HFS") are owned by the same company.. But, from what I can tell, WWDC is owned by Clear Channel, while WHFS is owned by Infinity Broadcasting -- what gives?
Alex Bischoff
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
BBC Radio is excellent, I only listen to Radio 1,3,4 and 5 but I've never had any problems with the content on any of them. Sara Cox is annoying, but I'd be annoying if I had to get up at 4 in the morning.
John Peel is worth the license fee on his own.
Alex
I think that many people percieve the music business to be a competition, one where, ideally, the best music wins and the not so great doesn't. Well, it obvoiusly doesn't work that way, I am sorry to say. So much for captialism!
This is just another nail in the coffin of today's music business. As alternate routes for music become available, and can be secured by the equivalent of a GPL, then the music business will either change or die off.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
"Independent Promotion" means (and I quote/paraphrase from the words OF an independent promoter as reported IN 'Hit Men' which I own and have read with great interest), "Well, I understand you're wondering why you pay me so much money to get a record played. And you're wondering, is it really true that I can get a record played. But the question you need to be asking yourself is, can I STOP a record from being played?"
Did you think the music business was fair? That is where the money goes. The RIAA actually _is_ feeling the pinch, but this is because it's under the gun of independent promotion and has to pay protection money to get anything played on radio. That's the way it's been for decades, that's the way it is. That's also the reason indie internet musicians won't ever get on radio (and I think we shouldn't bother even trying- waste of energy).
At no point are we talking real advertising here. It's advertising the way Mob shakedowns are 'insurance'. Sure it's organised crime, your point?
Oh, and your figure for artist pay seems _very_ high- you're not counting the accounting tricks that get played (I can detail them if you like) and you're not counting recouping. In practice, artists don't get paid, they just get the label to take them into the studio without charging them directly and up-front. Even that's on the decline.
Boy, do you have _that_ right! It's a good example of what happens. Now where's that -1 Offtopic? Surely comment about the mechanics of HOW THIS CAME ABOUT is far from the desired topic of bitching about the RIAA ;)
Think about it...
To be specific, they sure as hell are not Top 40.
But if 90% of listeners are 'crap', that's a relative judgement, only relevant from one particular perspective. If I use my perspective, it means 90% of listeners do not have the training to identify weird 'wrong' notes and strange polyrhythms- or, more importantly, the experimentalism to enjoy listening to stuff their brain can't immediately recognize.
If you took Britney Spears' perspective, 90% of listeners are crap... because 90% of listeners will tire of her formula eventually! How crappy to be faithless and disloyal like that ;) nobody is exempt from the 90% rule...
And if you go back into radio, and wind up being very manipulative and playing 100% payola garbage, 90% of your listeners will see through it and listen to you with a sort of cynical attitude that tends to deflate your attempts to be The Soundtrack To Their Life (in the tradition of old Motown). Crap! *G*
YEAH! Slashdot is the perfect fucking forum for corroboration!!
Word!
--
Kir
3cx.org - A truly bad website.
It's even worse than this article presents... promoters will bill labels even is station managers decide to play the song on their own.
Check Pay for play and Fighting pay-for-play.
Once upon a time, this function was actually performed by radio station music directors and program directors (when allowed to by owners and general managers). If you think the stuff you heard on the air was bad, you should hear the other 90% that showed up in the mail every week that we had to sort through. It's amazing how many people think they've got any business making a record.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I'm not sure, but that may be quite insightful. I've gotta think about it a lot more. One thing for sure, if I ever go back into radio, that's gonna be lurking there in the back of my mind just waiting to come to the surface at all the worst times.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Your restaurant analogy fails because as many other restaurants (whether selling Evian exclusively or not) as capitalists are willing to risk money on can be opened in the same geographical area as the first one, but once all the radio station licenses for a particular area have been allocated by the FCC you can't put another one on the air in that same area. So even if all the stations in your area are playing the same old -insert records you hate most here-, you can't start up another station to offer an alternative because you can't get a license; they're all already taken.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Speaking of electronic tip jars, check out last Thursday's Cringely and the one from the week before that.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
The part that the RIAA doesn't tell you is that every time you play a particular recording, it's like a free advertisement for that recording.
( At least until you play it so bleeping much that everybody's too sick of it to even consider buying their own copy, but that's a different rant.)
Granted airplay (or clubplay) will probably boost sales of -insert group of the week here- more than an old Streisand album cut, but Babs (or more accurately her label) might still pick up another shekel or two because of the exposure.
This is a holdover from when records needed radio worse than the other way around.
Now the record companies figure they're in a strong enough position (partly as a result of being part of mega-conglomerates that can stuff the songs they want to plug into whatever their TV and movie divisions are filming that week, or onto one of their cable channels) to demand payment for everything short of walking into the record shop to browse.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
So, I'm from Dallas. And The Toadies? Well, they're from Fort Worth. But it's all basically the Dallas "metroplex" anyway.
I care a lot about the local music scene. I run a tiny little record label. I help my friends in bands out all the time.
Recently, a college station here did a "fest" with The Toadies headlining. I went to help out one of the "lesser" bands playing n the bill, and to see another band I'm good friends with.
The first band on the main stage (where Toadies would later play) that I came to see was Little Grizzly. The show was at a bad venue (cool looking, the Ridglea Theater, but bad) and it wasn't there best show, but dear God, the heckling from those Toadies fans. It's almost as if they'd never heard the college station or anything.
After their set, some little kid in front of me who was heckling the band finally pissed me off to the point that I said something about it. He said, "Who's the loser? I came to see a NATIONAL band, and you came to see a LOCAL band."
You can't argue with logic like that, folks.
Luckily, Legendary Crystal Chandelier's set went more smoothly, since it was upstairs.
The fact is, people don't really care as much about music as some of us do. Hell, most Slashdotters obviously don't... they're too busy decrying the RIAA for "making" them buy "$17 CDs" with "only one or two good songs on them".
The fact that people want to be told what to listen to is sad. The fact that the ability to tell them what to listen to is for sale is both expected and yet very depressing.
Yes, really, go see a local band. And not some fucking Adidas rock bullshit... ie something that doesn't sound like Limp Bizkit. Think a little.
If anyone cares, feel free to email me - I can tip you off to 20 great bands from Dallas, some of whom tour around the country (and no, Flickerstick doesn't count).
Might as well waste the karma.
Dude, please tell me you're being sarcastic. Otherwise, you're a fucking idiot.
Tomato. Potato.
I have lived in the Atlanta area since just before the Olympics. It is one of the fastest growing radio markets and the one that all the advertisers and promotors want. I can't tell you how many times I have turned on the three big stations and heard the same song within five minutes of each other. These are stations that supposedly have different audiences (rock, top 40, and generation-X) but they all play the same damn music! When I travel out of town I hear different music, good music. Why is this not being played in Atlanta? My guess is payola. It has gotten a little better lately, we have two new stations that allow you to listen to slightly different music during the non-peak hours. Other times it is the same old prepackaged crap that somebody on a committee somewhere thinks I need to hear over and over again.
This first segment was interesting, I hope the other two are just as good. The more people that think about this, the more likely it is to change the system.
> And the recording industry wonders why sites like Napster sprung up?
That's a point that has been totally ignored in the Napster/file sharing debate. Why would a hundred-odd-million people *want* to steal so much intellectual property, as the lables claim? Are we a nation of thieves, seperated from total lawlessness and anarchy only by locks and fences? I don't think so.
I believe that Napster could not have happened were it not for industry abuses of the consumer. Remember when vinyl records were $10US? And than CD's came out, and the price was $20US, with the excuse being that it was so much more expensive to make a CD... But the truth is that digital reduced the cost of every step of album production, manufacturing, and distribution. It costs less to record on digital, mastering is cheaper and easier, pressing is cheaper (vinyl was close to $1US/copy back in the '70s, CD's are far below that today.) CD's cost less to warehouse and ship, and you can fit more per square foot of shop space at retail. Yet CD's still list for $20US, and the labels still pay only half the royalty rate to the artists! (And yes, most recording contracts still only pay for 90% of the records, allowing 10% for damages because, you know, lacquer records are fragile!)
One can argue all day about the right and the wrong of file sharing (and I'm purposely NOT addressing the right and wrong, whether it's theft or not, blah blah blah) but I cannot imagine much more that the Majors could have done to prepare the market for the emergence of technologies such as Napster.
> Some big corporation has an arrangement to manage those racks.
In the record industry those guys are called "Rack Jobbers". They would lease rack space in stores, and fill them with product. Of course, a label or distributer could pay the rack jobber to make sure his product got some of the (probably limited) shelf space. Or, more likely, he could pay to make sure someone else's product did *not* get shelf space.
Once apon a time, this was the way a large percentage of records were sold, at least here in the US, especially in rural America. Over time, smaller "mom-and-pop" retail outfits gave way to large chain stores, and the chain stores now run their own racks, and have the power to make a CD available to large segments of the population overnight. Think about Wal-Mart. Wal-mart is perhaps the largest record retailer in the United States. In rural America, your local Wal-Mart might be the ONLY record retailer available. And if they only carry what you see on MTV and VH1 and TNN, well, then that's the only music that exists (as far as the consumer knows!)
$19.95 list, about $10-12 to the retailer, so $14US is a common discount price. In the Vinyl days, the "standard" royalty was 10% of suggested retail, less holdbacks (10% for breakage, etc.) record club stock (the artist doesn't get payed for sales through "record clubs") promotional copies, etc. The standard royalty for CD's is 5%. Britney, of course, gets a higher percentage. The IRS (of all people) has a good quicky overview of the money side here in evil pdf format
>Some please tell me what is music advertising? I hear no advertising; I see no advertising...
That would be the Payola. And "Teen Beat" magazine, too...
One of the big changes after the Indy promoter scandal of the '80's is that much of the money now comes from the artists "tour support" package, which is a recoupable expense. What that means is, Independant promoters are still getting money, but the money comes out of the band's royalties. So now it's more like 1% materials, 0% artist pay, 0% publishing fee (if the band wrote the song, it's subject to recoupment) etc...
C'mon is there anyone out there under the age of 35 that DID NOT know this was the way radio stations/record labels operate ?? It is the corporate way and we've grown up with it. That does not make it right but when someone looks suprised by things like this I begin to understand the generation X attitude. Old people are naive and stupid some times.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
And then think for your self. I scarcely remember ever having read such a pile of boohoo, woe is me, look how rough we have it, cry baby bullshit.
What ever deal they have struck with 'artists' it was of their own making. Sorry, but record labels crying over how hard they have it smacks of so much irony I'm still looking for the cast iron pan they must have used. It is an interesting read, I will grant you that, but an objective analysis of the record industries 'situation' it is not.
Like most things, I expect the truth lies somewhere between the stories of the two different sides. Pardon me, but I have got to get back to downloading MP3's.
Logs Link Payments With Radio Airplay
Music: Independent promoters' lists show the date a station airs a song and the amount paid by the artist's record label.
By: CHUCK PHILIPS
TIMES STAFF WRITER
For 40 years, federal law has prohibited broadcasters from accepting money or anything of value in exchange for playing songs on the radio without disclosing the practice to listeners.
But internal documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times indicate that several independent promoters keep detailed logs--called "banks"--listing the date a station airs a song followed by a dollar amount collected from the artist's label. The stations that add the most songs over the course of a year build the biggest banks and consequently earn the largest fees.
Like a bank account, there are debits and credits, deposits and withdrawals. The promoter makes "deposits" when the right songs are played and "withdrawals" for the station to receive payment in the form of cash, travel and tickets to events.
The documents show that each of the five major record companies--Vivendi Universal, Sony, Bertelsmann, AOL Time Warner and EMI Group--paid fees to an independent promoter associated with a Portland, Ore., radio station that played songs produced by their labels. Officials for these record companies declined to be interviewed.
Experts say the newly disclosed bank data could threaten the licenses of numerous stations.
"This document destroys the notion that the new payola is any different from the old payola," said Peter Hart, an analyst for the New York-based media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting.
"What you have here is a smoking gun. This document confirms suspicions that critics have long had about potential tit-for-tat arrangements between independent promoters and radio stations. An appropriate government investigation could blow this whole industry wide open."
Federal agents already are deep in a four-year probe of corruption in the radio business. Five executives from Latin music labels and radio stations have pleaded guilty to payola-related tax offenses. And last year, Clear Channel Communications, the nation's largest radio conglomerate, was fined for a payola violation involving a promotion that guaranteed airplay of a song by pop singer Bryan Adams in exchange for a series of free performances at concerts sponsored by its station.
Officials at the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department declined to comment on their investigations and on the bank arrangements. Music Promotion Process Revealed
The world of music promotion and influence peddling is a murky one that is usually kept out of public view. Independent promoters dodge the tit-for-tat rules of payola by paying broadcasters annual fees they say are not tied to airplay of specific songs.
Practitioners of this $100-million-a-year trade--largely hidden under layers of arms-length alliances and thick legal opinions--seek to determine the songs that will reach the airwaves and climb the music industry charts.
The newly obtained documents detail exactly how the process works, who is paid and how much, and how radio stations, promoters and the world's largest record companies say they keep their arrangements one step inside the law.
The documents include a sales pitch to prospective clients by Michele Clark Promotion, a Calabasas-based firm, that outlines a "sample bank." The company denies that such pacts cross the line into illegality.
"We aren't doing anything wrong here," Michele Clark said in an interview. "The support I get from labels has no effect whatsoever on the musical decisions of the program directors at my stations."
Besides, Clark said, the practice is widespread throughout the industry. "I didn't invent this thing. It's standard operating procedure in the promotion business. Every [independent promoter] in nearly every format uses it."
She added: "Every indie keeps internal accountings of what stations are worth. You base the value of a station on what you are able to bill on their behalf. Obviously, the more a radio format helps sell records, the higher the stakes will be for the labels--and the higher the budgets paid by indies to the stations involved."
Clark's firm caters to stations in the album adult alternative, or AAA, format--quiet rock music that accounts for only a sliver of U.S. music sales. The money funneled into AAA station banks is a pittance compared with what music conglomerates throw around in the industry's biggest radio formats, such as top 40, alternative and rock.
Indeed, record labels pay independent promoters as much as $4,000 per song to influence airplay at the nation's biggest broadcast outlets. And many labels have exclusive deals with promoters who operate under the same bank formula, promotion and label executives say.
Clark provides broadcasters with annual fees as high as $120,000 to defray expenses for contest giveaways, vacation fly-aways, concerts, conventions and other promotions, the documents show. The labels pay her about $1,000 per song that gets added to a playlist.
According to one document, Clark earned about $50,000 last year for songs added to the playlist at Portland, Ore.'s KINK-FM, a division of Viacom-owned Infinity Broadcasting. The bank lists every time KINK aired a song followed by a specific dollar amount and the name of the label Clark billed for the play time.
For example, after KINK added a song by Fiona Apple on Jan. 17, Sony's 550 label paid Clark $1,000, the bank says. Vivendi Universal's Mercury label paid Clark $1,000 on Feb. 14 after KINK added a song by Kim Richey. Bertelsmann's Windham Hill label, EMI Group's Capitol label and AOL Time Warner's Giant label each paid about the same fee for songs by Janis Ian, Shivaree and Steely Dan, according to the bank.
Another document, titled "non-money stuff," shows a list of songs played by KINK and a corresponding list of products or services, including concert tickets and a promise that certain acts might appear later at a station benefit. 'We Don't Do Anything Illegal or Unethical'
Clark and the station management deny that the paperwork is an accounting of songs aired in exchange for payment of products or services.
"The document you have in your hand is typical of the kind of paperwork most independents use for their private bookkeeping," KINK Program Director Dennis Constantine said in an interview. "I don't know how it got out. But we don't do anything illegal or unethical here. No matter what the companies pay [Clark] or what she writes in that bank, it has absolutely no bearing on how we program this station."
Clark's bank includes a running tally of withdrawals for Clark-financed contest prizes given to KINK listeners. In addition, Clark deducted nearly $3,000 for registration fees, plane tickets and hotel accommodations for two KINK employees to attend trade conventions.
Clark said it is common practice for independent producers to "sponsor" radio station employees at trade conventions and cover the costs of their expenses. Constantine agreed, but said attorneys for Viacom have recently issued a policy forbidding KINK employees from taking money for trade show junkets. In a recent interview, Viacom Chief Operating Officer Mel Karmazin said the corporation will not tolerate questionable promotion tactics at Infinity stations.
Clark is not the only promoter pitching easy-listening broadcasters with bank proposals. The Times reviewed a similar arrangement from one of Clark's competitors in the AAA format, Los Angeles-based Harry Levy. Levy declined to comment.
Most of the nation's top promoters keep bank tallies, including Bill McGathy, whose New York-based promotion firm rules the rock radio format. Internal records show that McGathy logs fees collected from labels for added songs as well as for the value of concert appearances at station events brokered by his firm.
McGathy declined to comment for this story.
Privately, some independent promoters brag about their ability to influence programming, label sources say. But they sing a different tune in their contracts, furnishing stations with language steeped in anti-payola warnings drafted by former FCC attorneys.
Those contracts specify that independent promoters are free to pitch specific songs to broadcasters, but the broadcasters are not obligated to add any song to their playlists. All radio stations need to do in exchange for an annual fee is give promoters advance notice of which songs they plan to add to their weekly playlist. The promoters in turn bill the labels for each song that gets added.
Record executives have long operated under the premise that independent promoters have the power to influence the success of certain songs, either by getting them added to a station's playlist or by keeping them off the air.
The bank disclosure comes at a time when Clear Channel, which controls 1,200 radio stations, is considering bids for an exclusive $20-million contract from several promoters, including Cincinnati-based Tri-State Promotions and Chicago-based Jeff McClusky Promotions.
Cumulus Media, a Chicago-based broadcast group that owns 210 radio stations, already has negotiated a $1-million pact with McClusky, whose firm has nearly 100 stations across the nation tied up in exclusive deals.
Clark and other independent promoters interviewed for this story contend that every promotion pact--regardless of its size or format--is calculated on the same bank principle.
"When an indie promises a station a $40,000 annual budget, that number doesn't come out of thin air," Clark said. "The station has got to be worth something to the record companies."
The accounting log, or "bank," of Michele Clark Promotion shows record label payments to her for artists' songs played on the radio and payments she made for station promotions and expenses.
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Airwaves are a limited resource, that's true; but so is land. We don't have a problem with people owning land.
And technology can allow sharing of airwaves far more readily than sharing of land.
The REAL reason the government interferes in this is because we've let them, and we've bought their bullshit excuse for maintaining the power.
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The government stepped in because the Network was not only an illegal monopoly (cartel would be the correct term, I think), it's "business practices" (extortion, threats of violence, and other criminal behavior) made it more or less just a profitable subset of organized crime.
I'm aware of that, I used to be in the radio biz.
The problem, however, is that those things were already illegal. Making a perfectly legitimate activity illegal on the theory that it will discourage an illegitimate activity is contrary to our entire system of government, or at least the one we profess to have.
This is exactly the sort of power that we let the government have that makes them think they can also do things like outlaw internet porn (because kids could conceivably access it) or outlaw guns (because criminals could conceivably get them) or restrict free speech (because you could conceivably pirate a DVD.)
We can't be against it in one instance and gung-ho for it in another, just because the latter has been around for a long time. Every time you don't oppose your government grabbing more power, you lose more freedom. We've already got measurably less freedom than we had right before we kicked the British out.
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The ONLY problem with your argument is the fact that the radio spectrum is a limited resource, owned by the public and placed under the stewardship of the FCC (that is, the government).
Water is a limited resource, but it's perfectly legal for Evian to give a restaurant a discount (essentially the same as paying them to serve the product) in return for only serving their water.
Land is a limited resource, but it's perfectly legal for Disney to charge you $35 to walk through the front door.
People are a limited resource (at any given moment) but it's perfectly legal for FedEx to pay me $x to administrate only their Unix systems.
TV uses the SAME limited resource as radio, but it's perfectly legal to pay a network to let you air your program. Happens all the time.
In fact, it's perfectly legal to pay a radio station to play your music, as long as it contains an advertisement. It could be a 3-minute piece of music with 5 seconds of ad, but that's legal; it's only illegal if you take the advertisement out.
Does that strike you as logical?
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You can TRY to get a TV network to play what you pay them for...I bet you'll be unsuccessful.
Why would I be unsuccessful, when thousands of other advertisers succeed daily? Or did you think those ads ran for free?
TV frequencies ARE regulated. It is required that certain bands be set aside for things like PBS. You're arguing that radio should not be regulated, by saying it's like TV, which is easily as regulated as radio. This doesn't make sense.
I agree, if that was what I was saying, it wouldn't make sense. But you set that straw man up just so you could say "this doesn't make sense".
What I am arguing is that ONE SPECIFIC LAW makes no sense. That law happens to only apply to radio, BTW, not TV.
Oh; and humans only occupy a tiny portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
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Instead of everybody jumping on the "it's illegal so it must be bad" bandwagon, how about we take a step back and ask:
WHY is it illegal?
Is there really a compelling government interest in making sure that one company doesn't pay another company to perform a service? I mean, if the radio station is playing music people don't want to hear, we'll stop listening, right?
Does it really matter so much that it ought to be enforced at gunpoint?
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AMEN!
I live in Portland Oregon. As a kid I remember many differences between radio stations back then. There was one here called KSKD. They played lots of different things. Had a very deep play list, you were never quite sure what you were going to hear. They did stay focused on a particular genera of music, but did not stick with the approved singles. When they were sold to become a hard rock station, it all went away. That is when my eyes began to open.
The simple truth of it is that there is a lot of really good content out there. Things like Peer to Peer, and the Internet in general have shown me this. Think you can stand FM radio? Try this:
1. Spend a day on the Internet. Check out the music being presented in other countries. Use the web, your favorite P2P tool and get some of it.
2. Put all of that in a directory and set it to shuffle play.
3. Leave it on for a couple of days and go about your business.
4. If at work, ask others to contribute by dropping random things in there. Just make sure they are not top 40.
5. After a while turn your radio on and just try to find something listenable, and if you do, try to see if the mood lasts for more than 10 minutes.
6. Wonder briefly about your lost innocence and move on to the wider world of music you havd discovered.
7. After one year compare your music collection to those who are still getting their new music via traditional means.
We are doing this right now where I work, (From import CD's mostly dammit!) and in only a couple of months it changed everything. We listen to techno from japan, dance and club from europe, rock from down under, and a lot more. Yes we do buy CD's, just not the top 40 ones. We know where to hear those songs over and over....
Radio used to be better. It was never all that good, but now it sucks in general. Every station that has gone out on a limb to play interesting music has only lasted about 6 months here... Even though people listened.
Each market here should be allowed to have one station that gets to play a diverse play list. Localize things a little. In a nation as large as America, you would think travelling 1000 miles or so would get you some new tunes...
There is something seriously wrong with the fact that you don't.
Blogging because I can...
Sounds like the satellite thing could be pretty decent. I'll be watching for it.
:O
Blogging because I can...
To my ear, I thought the best music of the show was the stuff they played immediately after the wall was assembled, when you couldn't actually see the band. I later found out that they weren't actually bothering to play when they were out of sight of the audience: live performance at its finest.
There's nothing wrong with the general themes of The Wall album, (freedom/alienation) and in my opinion it had a few good tracks on it, but overall I thought the handling was fairly trite and adolescent.
If you're going to feel bad about missing out on something from that period, how about being in New York to see Talking Heads play at a small club like CBGBs? I got to see the Ramones play in a small place out on Long Island around then, (and they were completely shown-up by their warmup band, the "A"s, an act that no one has heard of these days). Probably the best show that I remember from around then: Patti Smith and Richard Hell on a double bill at the briefly lived "CBGB's Second Avenue".
(Oh, and I'm pretty sure that the inflatable pig was used on the Animals tour only, which I thankfully did not attend, since that was possibly their worst album...)
A lot of college radiostations are (still?) broadcast on the internet. Many of them are really independant: the DJs are largely free to follow their own interests. All you have to do is find one adventurous DJ whose taste you trust, and you've got a pipeline feeding you with more good, new stuff than you can possibly deal with.
(The station I'm involved with is KZSU, the Stanford radio station, but I'd need to know more about what kind of music you're after before I could recommend a particular show on the air.)
Another thing you can do is find a site/zine/magazine that you can more or less trust. Most of the slick glossies are pretty clearly sold-out to the crap machine, but even so I can think of things like The Wire (note, not "-ed"). This is a UK based magazine that in my opinion does a great job of covering interesting music almost without regard to genre (e.g. some recent issues have focused on Sigur Ros, Talvin Singh, and John Cale).
Another move of course, is to look for news groups and mailing lists that talk about stuff you're interested in. Just drop in and say "I like *Foo*, where do I find more?" (Though you need to be prepared to be flamed if you ask about "Nine Inch Nails" on rec.music.industrial or "Marilyn Manson" on alt.gothic).
I don't know what part of the state you're in, maybe you can't hear it where you are... but remember that it's a good rule of thumb when scanning the airwaves in the united states to start at the bottom of the dial (or "left of the dial", as the Replacements put it before they became replaceable). With few exceptions, the only interesting radio in the states are the faint noncommercial signals below 92FM or so...
(The main exception seems to be the Pacifica stations: they've been around long enough that they've got frequencies in random places out of this ghetto.)
Apology accepted. As long as we're on the subject, I apologize on behalf of the US for, um... uh... jeez. Just about everything else wrong with popular music.
Those utter bastards! Why can't they just let poor Bryan die a natural death, like he should have at the end of the eighties?
The music industry pays and/or 'promotes' radio stations to spread the word about their artists, with the full knowledge that anyone with good bandwidth--I mean--reception, could record the song at near-CD quality? And sometimes they give radio stations free CDs and shirts to give away--for promotion??
I smell a Napster counter-suit, howabout you?
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
This show was a great example of the kind of thing that can only be shown on PBS. There's no way any of the other channels could have shown something so deconstructionist. (Is that a word?) Loved it.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I haven't watched TV in about a year, except for occasional glimpses while my couch-potato brother is glued to it and parents ask me to get him to do something. I don't miss it at all. :)
Ditto radio, except on the rare occasions that friend's CD/MP3 player is broken and we're in the car...silent drive bad. And even then, we go through considerable hassle (we've even extended the antenna on the car, for chrissakes) to try to pull SOMETHING decent out of the general crud out there
I also haven't eaten in a fast-food restaurant in months (not just the usual 'big-corps-bad' mentality, I'm opposed to their labor practices).
And I'm probably what you'd call a 'kid' (I'm 16).
It's really not that hard to do this...just don't watch/listen to anything that offends your intelligence.
-- Veni, vidi, dormivi
Oh, I am.
Family decided to watch TV with dinner tonight...I watched for about two minutes and then picked up my plate and ate in the other room.
It just disgusted me how low the programming was aimed.
-- Veni, vidi, dormivi
You forgot to mention Ipecac Records, owned jointly by Greg Werckman and Mike Patton, two veterans of the trade.
For doing your own streaming broadcast legally, check out Live365.com. You can either upload mp3s to their server and have them handle the bandwidth, or if you want more control, you can do it yourself and use them as more of a promotion/legality sort of thing. Though, I'm not sure how much support they give you legally if you are controlling the whole broadcast on your own PC. If you use theirs, you have to agree to a set of rules that basically say that you can't play more than a set number of songs from one album in a row, and some other things. They're registered with ASCAP and whoever else manages that sort of thing.
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mind21_98 - http://www.translator.cx/
"Ask not if the article is utter BS, but what BS can be exposed in said article."
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
If you have for-profit media, you're gonna have corruption and a generally biased viewpoint when it comes to news, etc. If media was non-profit, those things may still exist, but to a lesser extent. Bias would be less evident and the media would try harder to be objective when it comes to reporting stories. Heck, they might even play better music in the process.
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mind21_98 - http://www.translator.cx/
"Ask not if the article is utter BS, but what BS can be exposed in said article."
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
Ipecac looks respectable, and their splash page is a hoot©
There were lots of labels I left out© The Grateful Dead had their own label, as did Sun Ra in the 1960s© There's Bill Rieflin's First World, Ani DiFranco's Righteous Babe, and so on©
The playing field's not entirely even© It's hard for these small guys to get reliable mainstream distribution and prominent display space in record stores ¥payola again© That's why I buy about 90% of my CDs mail order, and directly from a small label when applicable©
Helium balloons want to be free.
Of course they're corrupt. The moral bankruptcy of the mainstream music industry is only too well documented.
I say that it doesn't matter. What's really corrupt is slickly packaged, trite, utterly empty rubbish that passes for music. There's no law against that, and there shouldn't be.
The music industry are scavengers, cleaning up on second handers who don't want to listen to music they like so much as music they are told that other people like. That they ruthlessly exploit musicians is another topic.
My suggestion is that if you don't like what you hear on the radio, turn it off, and support the small labels trying to change the way the business operates; e.g. Chris Cutler's Recommended Records, John Zorn's Tzadik, or Robert Fripp's DGM. That all of the above are run by world class veteran musicians should be no surprise - they've been there, done that, got the t-shirt and the shaft.
Helium balloons want to be free.
No wonder they are all paranoid about Napster et al! Obviously, they are willing to pay a great deal to get thier songs to the masses, but now the power is in the hands of the individual.Yes, people still download what is on the radio, but in time that will change.
When we are talking about THIS much money, someone somewhere is getting really scared.
Take a look at the ebsq group for self-representing artists on eBay and other auctions sites. You can find great art and get to deal with the artist directly! *shameless plug over*
The Edge is an incredible station. The list of great shows just goes on and on (and they broadcast on the internet!). http://www.edge102.com
Humble and Fred left to do the morning show for AM 640 (a former all news station that has since changed its format to one geared to men - sports, girls and stuff like that - sort of like Maxim on the radio - they're now called Mojo Radio www.mojoradio.com) to do their morning show. The new guy tries really hard to be like Humble & Fred - hopefully he'll stop that soon.
Some stores are paid to place fixtures with specific products on certain locations. But the product that a grocery store provides isn't the location, or quantity of new and improved Crap-in-a-can. The stores provide the availability of all the stuff you want, or might want, to buy. A better anology would be the collusion of some soft drink companies to "buy" more linear feet to prevent other soft drink companies from selling their wares.
The soda companies are just an extreme. I used to work in a grocery store that was part of a small chain, and virtually all product manufacturers paid for shelf space. It's not a huge deal.
Radio stations are free to play whatever they want without accepting kickbacks, and, if doing so meant the quality of their content was so much superior that the increase in listenership made up for the lost payola, they'd do it. Why don't they? Most people like teen-bopper mass-produced crap. This is unfortunate, but it's true. How many Britney Spears-loving pre-teens do you know?
OK, this is a rant.
I've lived in four countries; Germany, US, Sweden and Australia, and I have to say this quite simply. American media is the worst. By far.
The reason is simple, the business of America is business, the research of America is business, the government of America is business and art in America is just business.
On the plus side, Americans are rich and pay is good, at least if you've got a degree and work hard and are a bit lucky. But, it means you have to watch over promoted shit from Hollywood, watch TV that is utterly crap, watch professional sports that are little more than long ads and, if you're silly enough to listen to the radio, listen to virtually uninterupted crap.
Honestly, Americans talk about choice but there is none. I live in a city of about 1.5 million and there is less choice in films here than there was in Australia in a city of 300,000. Try listening to Australian radio - triple J broadcasts on the internet. There is a radio station that plays good new music, rather than Britney spears. And as for TV. Well, cable here has less variety than Australian, Swedish or German free to air.
It's all money, and money produces crap entertainment in the long run. Just like American fast food, fatty, dull and tasteless after a while.
(Warning, I've ranted about this before, so if it seems familiar it probably is.)
Between musicians & fans involves fans being able to directly-pay musicians, bypassing the inefficient layers of "corruption" inherent in the current system. e-gold (among other options) now makes this possible in ways un-dreamed-of in the days of Alan Freed, and it's going to lead to good things for artists and fans (greed-disclamer -- and me!). Slashdot readers are free to contact me for a free spot of my favorite currency if you want to play with our Shopping Cart. e-gold works for this because e-metal payments are pushed, rather than pulled, and settle instantly and internationally. Yes, I'm a greedy self-interested capitalist, but we've been ignored for a long time in favor of failed systems that try to be a real currency but can't, for a variety of reasons. e-gold, in either a tipjar or pay-per-listen model, is what will work today. e-gold has been in the black for over a year, and is not a typical overhyped dot.com (in fact, I'm pretty-much the entire hype-department, in many ways!).
I happen to prefer the tipjar idea to pay-per-listen because I like voluntary stuff, and I have enough faith in what's left of human nature to think that most of us will leave tips. I also have enough faith in the greed and inefficiency of the RIAA to think that tips will end up benefitting artists more than the present system, but I have no proof (yet!). I'm giving e-gold away because it's in my interest for programmers to try and play with e-gold. Thanks for listening, as always I speak only for myself -- since nobody else would claim these opinions anyway.
JMR
AKA Cassandra, among other names...
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
"Shocked, I am, to find _gambling_ going on at this establishment!"
--
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Yeah...that Frontline was excellent. What the marketing machine did for Limp Bizkit, was done for Korn a few years before.
Go back to 1994, when Korn's label was throwing tons of promo material to radio stations. They were determined that Korn _would_ be the next big thing. Most of thought they sucked and threw the stuff away, but the label kept it up, and eventually all the kids knew who Korn was and thought they rawked. A star is born.
You combine all of this with the fact that the FCC will now allow a single owner to hold most of a market, and it gets even worse. The corporate owner (Clear Channel, Emmis, Infinity) figures they can save a few bucks by not duplicating staff all over the country. So pretty soon, a single MD and PD handle any given station format from corporate HQ, and you now have complete homogenization across the country.
Yeah, 'HFS (99.1, out of Landover MD) sold its soul years ago.
The original owner of WHFS started a new station, WRNR (103.1, out of Annapolis). He's since sold it, and it has gone somewhat more corporate, but it's still the best music station in the area (IM ever so HO).
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I think its because when the economy slows down the major labels try to save money in what they spend for promotion.
I agree with your observation, but not with your theory. Here's mine: bad economic times = high unemployment = lots of people with lots of time on their hands. Some of those people scrounge instruments, practice a bit and form bands. More bands = more diversity, and more good (and bad) music.
So a bad economy is good for music!
I have no faith in the quality of musice from a country that exported Benny Hill.
Check out the Frontline (excellent PBS news magazine) episode The Merchants of Cool
It's not only the radio stations...
Are all radio stations free to play whatever music they want? I've been told that commercial radio stations were require to pay a fee if they played songs that were not on some 'list of singles and EPs' or something, and that Public Radio stations were exempt from this rule, and this was the reason why Public Radio stations played a wider range of music variety.
... especially late PM/early AM.
Am I wrong? Please note that I'm a real neophyte when it comes to radio politics. However, what I'm saying is a pretty commonly held belief.
I'm a big fan of the public radio stations here in the SF Bay Area: KPFA in Berkeley and KZSU in Stanford have some excellent music selections
I'm also interested in creating my own audio streaming stations, but want to do it like the Public Radio stations do it... do it free and legally.
-= Stefan
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
...and this is the reason I don't care one bit that my car radio has been broken for over 2 years.
If you're interested in more information about this, I just finished reading a book called "Last night a DJ saved my life: The history of the Disc Jockey". It outlines the rise of dance music in the 20th century, and starts with an in depth history of radio disc jockeys.
One of the interesting things it mentioned was that although Freed was the first person busted for 'payola', he was by no means the only one accepting it at the time. Apparently it was common practice at that time too. The book claims that Freed was busted instead of other DJs because of his love for rock made by black musicians, which he would play instead of the sanitized rock made by white musicians.
Telestra: All your bandwidth are belong to us.
This [O-Town, corruptedness of the record labels...] is the reason my car radio is permanently set to NPR.
I don't find it hard to believe that the same kids who grew up with Teletubbies and Barney, who enjoy watching Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen videos (and their new magazine *gag*) would get into O-Town.
Usually I see them for about $14 at Meijers, Best Buy, etc (if you get them when they first come out, on sale) But yeah, I see your point.
As they say about porn "I know it when I see it..."
Granted, independents produce a lot of drek, but most radio stations play *100%* crap. At least with Internet radio there's exposure to artists whose name *isn't* Shaggy, O-Town, or deity-forbid, The Backstreet Boys. Granted, you still have to wade through a lot of crap, but at least it's *different* crap.
For example, I found an artist I've come to really enjoy through an interview on the Bravo TV network. No one in radio in the Midwest is going to play the works of a Canadian cabaret singer. (Patricia O'Callaghan is her name, BTW) However, the Internet provides those opportunities.
The issue isn't necessarily that independent or obscure music is always better... its about the *choice* to listen to those artists. Radio doesn't provide that. The Internet does. That's why radio is in the trouble it's in, more commercialism, less music, less choice.
Is anyone really surprised by this? After all, radio is the most heavily commercialized venue for music you're liable to find. Most Top 40 stations play nothing but typical commercialized drivel anyway. Considering that traditional music outlets like radio and MTV hardly spend more than a third of their time actually playing music, no wonder everyone's gone on the Napster bandwagon. I've heard a more diverse selection of artists who aren't attached to the RIAA or the big labels through the Internet than traditional media have allowed. You better believe it's causing me to buy fewer major label CDs... because I actually can find *better music*. It's a win for good music, and a loss for the kind of crap that radio wallows in. Radio's a wasteland for the most part, and they're doing everything they can to help their bottom line. (Why else would they resort to giving money away to get listeners?) These payola deals are just one way of helping stave off oblivion before Internet mobile radio becomes practical and traditional radio dies comepletely.
FYI: WHFS has gone downhill since it started broadcasting, more so in the past few years.
Listening to the radio for music is almost impossible these days as dj's talk as much as they can. The only stations that don't play the same 25 songs everyday, allday, are oldies stations, and i can only listen to them for a bit. Maybe i'm just lazy, but i don't feel like pressing scan over and over to find a song that i like, i just pop in a cd and leave it in for 2 weeks straight in my truck, or until i get sick of it. besides, mp3s are what have really broadened my music horizons, i purchase cd's because of single mp3 tracks i download. oh well, that's all i have to say about that.
E.
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This Post has been brought to you by the letter "E".
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
I'm trying to keep this as un-patriotic as possible, so if I slip, please try to look past my unabashed love for true Americanism and see my arguments.
American media is the worst. By far.
No argument there. I nearly spit every day I read the paper, watch the "news," listen to the radio, etc. The simple fact is that there is a new class of people that wants to be lazy (and I, frequently, am one of them). Many people unfortunately confuse this with "American." Don't. This class of people exists, predominately in cities, all over the world ([cough] Paris, Tokyo[cough]). However, perhaps more than in most other countries, our businesses exploit this consumer class. Yes, our media outlets are primarily corporate-controlled. Why? Because we're greedy bastards. We (stereotypically) don't mind selling out. Even the most counter-cultured among us change our tunes when 7 figures worth of US$ are flashed in front of our faces. As repugnant as the resulting media environment may be, I STILL prefer it to Government controlled media. But that's another rant.
It's all money, and money produces crap entertainment in the long run. Just like American fast food, fatty, dull and tasteless after a while.
Hey... fast food is an acquired taste. Take up your holier than thou mantle if you like, but the fact remains that McDonalds is earning money in Paris, Rome, etc. (home of fantastic "real" cuisine).
Back to the point, however. You're complaining about our corporate entertainment engine. You seem to think that's all we have here in the states. You're mistaken. You're falling prey to that very same lazy consumerism we both so revile in our writings. You're only eating what corporate America is feeding you. Would it be fair if I were to fly into de Gaulle, and judge France on the ads I see in the terminals? Of course not. To find NON-corporate entertainment, one must go out into the world and f*cking LOOK for it. The price of freedom is responsibility. I'm not trying to convince anyone that the US is a free country or anything (if it ever was, it hasn't been since the '70s, when I was born), but we DO still have a more freedom-oriented society than some places. The freedom for big ugly corporations to brainwash us with corp-rock 24-7, and our own freedom to turn the f*cking radio off and go to a f*cking blues club. The responsibility is ours to seek out something else if we don't like it.
Next time you're sick of the radio here, try it. Go to a bookstore on live music night. Don't like it? Start your own band. That's a freedom/responsibility dichotomy I can live with.
"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." --Voltaire
You for got
1991 - Grunge
"I'm like an opening band for the sun" -Pearl Jam ; Yield ; Push Me , Pull Me
If you don't like what the corps give you, then don't take it. Find something else.
Shit, there are days that I don't even turn on the radio while driving to work. I have more fun listening to the hum of tires, the clanking of engines in need of a tunning, and simply not having the radio blare at me. It sure does make for a peaceful, low stress drive.
I gather you're not in Melbourne. Try 3PBS, and 3RRR. I think PBS has a webcast....
Buckets,
pompomtom
Buckets,
pompomtom
"There's an exception to every rule. Except for some rules"
We all knew that the same bland, vanilla-flavored crap was being pumped out on every channel. We knew that demographics dictated that the King Biscuit Flower Hour was going to be played on every freakin' station in the nation on weekends, while we were being fed pap by Journey, et. al. during the weekdays.
When people say that punk was a rebellion against boredom, and nothing more, they're missing the point. It was a rebellion against the media control addressed in the article.
In closing, I leave you with some words from the Dead Kennedys' historic performance at the Bammies.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
The kids whose billions pay for this machine are not only fully aware it's a sham, they embrace the cynicism and still manage to enjoy the show.
I guess the music industry is the 3rd to go down this route, where the 2nd was politics, following the lead of the professional wrestling.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I was recently in America, and I was surprised to hear the same songs being played over and over again on not only the same stations, but on almost every other station on the dial. It was almost as if they were all running a continuous loop of five songs.
So, thank fuck for the BBC. No commercial interests means no Payola. No Payola means no endless drivel of the same stuff all the time. BBC Radio 2 has recently become the most listened to station in the UK, the main reason being that it plays a massive mix of old and new music.
I'm sure most of you already know, but the BBC also webcast both Radio 1 and Radio 2 over RealMedia streams. If you live outside of the UK and want to know what a non-commercial, music playing radio stations sounds like, I recomend you try them. You might be surprised.
P.S: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1 & http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2 for those who don't like links in posts.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
I stopped listening to radio years ago. The local hits station (clear channel) plays the same redundant crap by the same redundant artists. Enter the world of online stations. They're independently owned, and usually have thousands of songs in their playlist by popular and not-so popular artists. I now listen to radioparadise.com at work. They are very eclectic, and I've heard some great music by unheard artists. If I hear a song I don't like, I vote it down on their website. They index this, so the songs that get the higher votes get played more often. Very cool stuff, and no 10 minute commercial breaks. (note: I'm not affiliated with them) And, of course, in the car I listen to CD's.
Now(or rather then; Napster is useless now)
Napster is only useless if you don't have WinMX, a Win32-based client that not only connects to unfiltered OpenNap servers but also has its own decentralized network. And there are always audiogalaxy, bearshare, and kazaa.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Over here in Orlando we have one station that puts aside a few hours on Saturday night( its from like 7pm to 10pm or something, which is prime air time), at this time they only play small Indie bands and local bands. This station is also a Clear Channel station.
Because we don't want it. The airwaves belong to the public and are subject to the rules imposed on them by us. We want to believe that the music we end up liking and connecting with has made it there because it's good. Unfortunatly, good music these days withers and dies if it isn't picked up and paid for by a major label. That's a shame, cause we are missing out. ALSO: Most people in the music biz refer to these scum as 'indies'. The first time I heard the term (and it doesn't come up that much in open discussion for reasons I'm sure you can figure out) I thought they were referring to Matador or SubPop. I wish I had grabbed a document I saw that outlined how much money goes to these 'indie' idiots. You'd be surprised. Every song in the top 40 was 'placed' there.
e x p e c t d e l a y . c o m
Payola in radio is legal, if it's disclosed. The illegality is in doing it without disclosure. The real story here is the likely consequences for the industry. RIAA has already quietly settled some price-fixing and racketeering suits, I hear. Regardless, they are now vulnerable to all sorts of lawsuits from independent record companies, listeners, etc. In addition, the Bush Administration may seek payback by beginning fraud and racketeering investigations. After all, the entertainment industry leans heavily Democratic, and its leaders are always calling for more regulation of (other) businesses.
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
Yes, I may feel a bit out of touch ("What? You haven't heard the new Staind song?") but it pays off in the end. Less ads clouding my time, more good music. Hunting for new music is something I do out of word of mouth or trial through MP3. Had it been for radio, I would not have found out about Badly Drawn Boy or Grandaddy.
The way I see it, for those people who truly enojy music, radio is but a small stepping stone in the path to enlightenment (not to say I am "enlightened"). It comes early, and is very optional.
So, what can you do? Get mp3s by new artists to listen to, listen to college/community radio, loan CDs from your local library, ask your friends what they listen to and likewise, share your music with everyone else. Radio is lazy and creatively broke, and has been for a long time.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Is this another example of why TMBG is better off spamming people than promoting their music in much less invasive ways?
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
what a relief! hope they keep him away from parts 2 & 3...
...probably to make sure everyone doesn't miss it with their filters.
well i can say with having the joys of calling into radio stations that they are affected by the good old payola. they won't play stuff they aren't paid for, i have bugged them to play electronic music and they claim there's "no market for them" however electronic bands, when they come around regularly sell out and even have lines around the corner waiting to buy extra tickets.
it will also explain why they do not play music from independant labels, they aren't being paid to play them. so no money to play them means no airplay for that label
there are several labels i chan thing of that this affects metropolis records , projekt records , gashed records , inception records none of them are part of the riaa, so i gladly buy their albums but the downfall of this is they get no air play due to a "lack of a market" even in the light of over sold shows.
frankly i hope the ftc and the crtc (the canadian version of the ftc for you non-canucks) actively looks into this because it really is detrimental to our independant record labels and artists who aren't on a big label and get the big push or should i say pay off to the radio station now?
Disclaimer:Most people wouldn't give a crap about the stuff I'm about to speil. So, don't read it if you don't want to.
Several things happened to change my tastes in music when I went away to college a couple of years ago.
1) The first and major thing that changed was that I was no longer in High School worrying about such trivial things such as fitting in with the "cool" group. Not that I really cared all that much for such things anyway, but when everybody in school was listening to a certain CD and were exclaiming how good it was I would go out and pick up the CD too. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. So, I mostly listened to what was popular at the time. I listened to what everybody else listened to. Of course, that just happened to be the pre-packaged crap that the music industry was spewing out, and paying good money to do so. But, once I got to college I stopped caring as much about such things
2)I went to college out of state and met many new friends who had come from different areas of the nation. Namely, they came from areas where there is something of a local music scene. (If there's any kind of local music scene here in Arkansas, I wish somebody would clue me in as to where to find it. All we ever get is the mindless, corporate crap.) As such, they had chances to see some of the lesser known bands and experience music that I'd never heard before. And these friends introduced me to this new music. I didn't realize that there could be such good music out there, and that it was good music that I'd never heard of. I had just assumed that if it were any good, then it would be played on the radio.
3)I went to school in a city that had a bit of a local music scene of its own. As such, I was able to experience a much wider array of music in person, than I ever had before. These were bands that had never come to Arkansas and probably never would.
4)Napster. Let's face it. Whether the record companies like it or not, Napster has changed the face of music forever. Now(or rather then; Napster is useless now), any time somebody mentions a band that I might like, I simply had to fire up Napster and download a few of their songs. If I liked them, I went out and bought the CD. If I didn't, oh well, nothing lost.
It is because of these four factors that I was able to discover a whole new breed of music: that of the non-prepackaged, corporatized crap. I found good music by talented artists who, more often than not, were making music to make music and not making music to make money. (Don't get me wrong on this point. Making good music can be very time consuming and can be very hard work. Good artists should get paid for their work.) I look at the popular music scene these days and I'm glad my music tastes have changed. I don't think I could have stomached the current boy band trend otherwise. Don't they remember New Kids On The Block? They know how it ends. Anyway, I encourage everybody who doesn't already to go out and give some lesser bands a try. You might like them.
--------------------------------------
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
D
Mad Scientists with too much time on thier hands
The first, last, and only tech news site on the net
Now if only MTV played more than 20 minutes of music a day...
My understanding of the brit invasion, is that the Beatles were huge and US record companies didn't know what to do--so they signed anyone who applied. They made a lot of bad music we don't hear any more, and a lot we still do.
Punk, I agree. It's an economy thing.
New wave, as I see it, was MTV acting as the new DJ. The european new wave artists were the only ones with videos. It's just too bad MTV doesn't play any music any more....
The economy is taking a down-turn and we're all REALLY sick of sugar-crap-music. I'm curious what's next.
Have you seen what goes into the cost of a CD?
It's something like: 1% materials, 5% artist pay, 20% publishing fee, 15% studio fee, 59% advertising. (No one will give actual numbers, so I just made them up based on what little information the RIAA will shell out.)
I don't care how much goes to artists or materials or publishing or studio. The RIAA says advertising takes most of the pie. WHAT ADVERTISING?!
Some please tell me what is music advertising? I hear no advertising; I see no advertising...
Now with that said, I present to you...
Pull my strings
By The Dead Kennedys
I'm tired of self respect
I can't afford a car
I want to be a prefab superstar
I wanna be a tool
Don't need no soul
Wanna make big money
Playing rock and roll
I'll make my music boring
I'll play my music slow
I ain't no artist
I'm a business man
No ideas of my own
I won't defend
Or rock the boat
Just sex and drugs
And rock and roll
And here we go...
Drool drool drool drool drool drool...
My Payola!
Drool drool drool drool drool drool...
My Payola!
You'll ten bucks to see me
On a fifteen foot high stage.
Fat ass bouncers kick the shit
Out of kids who try to dance.
My friends say I've lost my guts
I'll laugh and say
"That's rock and roll!"
But there's just one problem...
Is my cock big enough?
Is my brain small enough?
For you to make me a star?
Give me a toot,
I'll sell you my soul.
Pull my strings and I'll go far.
Give me a toot,
I'll sell you my soul.
Pull my strings and I'll go far.
And when I'm rich and meet Bob Hope
We'll shoot some golf
And shoot some dope
Is my cock big enough?
Is my brain small enough?
For you to make me a star?
Give me a toot,
And I'll sell you my soul
Pull my strings and I'll go far...
--
< )
( \
X
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
I was thinking about this recently and I find it interesting that when the economy slows down generally new musical trends appear. If you look back the last 30-40 years during recessions or economic downturns mainstream music takes a turn. The last good example was 1991, with grunge.
I think its because when the economy slows down the major labels try to save money in what they spend for promotion. This allows artists on smaller labels a chance to compete with the big boys. People like Nirvana on the Subpop label have a chance...
Some other examples are:
1981 - New Wave
1974 - Punk
1963 - British Invasion
I don't see much hope for the future as the laws seem ineffective and the Big Labels have just too money. ~Bryan Starbuck
You also may want to do a search on Salon for payola, or clear channel. Some very good articles.
There are lots of multi-billion dollar "non-profit" companies out there. I used to work for one. The way the game is played is this: If you have a surprisingly successful quarter, you pay out huge "bonuses" to your executive staff. That way, they come out just as well as if they were shareholding execs in a for-profit venture.
It's really just a difference of semantics.
Even setting that aside, your theory has one small problem...
If you are a human being, you are biased.
There is no such thing as purely objective journalism. Even those who try be "just the facts" reporters will allow their bias to bleed into their selection of stories, their choices of emphasis, and the "experts" they choose to interview.
As one example, Jim Lehrer of PBS's "News Hour" tries his darndest to be fair and objective, yet vast majority of Republicans who are invited to appear as talking heads on his show are liberal republicans like David Gergan. You are not likely to ever see the likes of Jack Kemp on his show. Mr. Lehrer does not have a similar aversion to the far left, so debates on his show are usually held between a liberal Democrat and a liberal Republican (which results in a very civil debate... lots of consensus of opinion is usually found between them.)
That's why, when I want to read or watch news analysis, I always turn to the extremists on both sides. Why? Because they are up front about their bias. On the Internet, The Smoking Gun makes no secret of being a JonKatzian-style anti-corporate leftist site, while The Drudge Report is published by an unapologetic Republican cheerleader.
The panel of the quirky-yet-entertaining PBS show "Mental Engineering" probably don't really think of themselves as lefties, but do such a poor job of hiding their bias that they might as well have a running caption that says "we hate capitalist marketing". And on the same network we have William F. Buckley's "Firing Line". Nobody ever accused Mr. Buckley of pretending to be unbiased.
When you consume media that is open about their bias, it invites critical thinking, which is a Good Thing. In our local radio market, there is a conservative blowhard named Jason Lewis who dominates the late afternoon drive. I find that about half the time, I disagree with either his position, or the argument he uses to support a position I would otherwise agree with, but I appreciate that he comes right out of the blocks proclaiming his bias. I wish more journalists would do the same.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
(Follow the link to see the lyrics to their notorious song about radio payola.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Alan Freed went down because he had integrity; he was honest. He would not sign an affidavit that said he had never accepted gifts or cash from the labels; in fact, he acknowledged that he had, and that anyone who signed said affidavit was a hypocrite, since that form of payola was widespread-- virtually all disc jockeys participated.
However, Dick Clark and most others did sign the affidavit, pretending ignorance and innocence, and were essentially off the hook.
Freed, on the other hand, was ruined.
To paraphrase "American Hot Wax:"
Damned if they don't keep trying though...
This sort of thing is exactly why I never listen to (mainstream) radio anyhow. I typically listen to MP3s, NPR, digitally imported (an online radio station, specializing in European Trance, Techno, Hi-NRG ... www.di.fm if you don't trust me) and on rare occasion, I'll listen to our local pop radio station.
This allows me to listen to whatever I want. Without having the same songs being forced into my ears due to the licensing deals, and other fun stuff of that nature.
This goes a long way to explaining how something like Napster has actually increased record sales rather than hurt them. People have actually been able to test the waters (or even find out about in the first place) for 100% of the music rather than the traditional 35-40 songs that would be overplayed by radio. I mean if Napster makes that back street boys or n'sync or metallica sell 12Million rather than 14Million...then those people are going to complain. But I am willing to bet their are a bunch of bands that would have sold 1400 without any radio help -- are selling 14,000 with Napster and other internet related methods. (their may be an additional 14,000 that download the album and don't purchase it -- however, the 14,000 that do is still much higher than the 1400 that do.....) Kind of like saying that their is no such thing as "Bad Publicity"...Hell with the system the way it is described in this article, the labels should be paying us to download songs from Napster -- in the same way they play the radio stations to play them.
Out...
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
KLF knew it...
They exploited the system
Read "The Manual"
In all this talk about the problems of too-limited playlist of songs on radio stations due to the payola situation, it will be very interesting to see what happens when XM satellite radio starts up later this year.
With 100 channels of audio programming, a limited playlist ain't going to cut it for listeners. You know there will be a huge choice of radio formats under XM, which means potentially a lot of music that we don't normally hear on FM radio stations now have a national outlet through XM. That means a lot of alternate and ethnic music could be heard nationally for the first time.
I am thoroughly sick of normal radio stations because they play the same crap over and over again, i'm guessing one of the reasons is "incentives" as mentioned here.
The other reason is that brain dead DJ's talk over as much of the song as they can - either because of ego or record companies ask them to so that it reduces the appeal of recording songs off the radio.
I've recently looked at the kind of radio stations you can get on the internet and if you want to listen to decent music they are the way to go.
If I want to listen to "rock/heavy metal" music our main radio station has (as far as I can tell) a massive 2 hours a week where they play it - the rest of the week is spent playing the same songs every hour.
--
no sig.
that's the reason I have a MP3 CD player in my car.....
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
You can set your watch by when WAPE (In Jacksonville) plays Destiny's Child.....god I hate that station....
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
As previously ranted (sans link; how do you search the archived stuff, anyway?), I live in a city dominated by Clear Channel and Capital Cities radio properties. There's only one AAA station, and they're now aiming downmarket to catch the kiddies. The AAA genre, in general, has been the last bastion of progressive radio. But, as shown in this article on the Gavin site, AAA programmers are intentionally abandoning their progressive listeners to move their focus to the low end of their demographic. We're now referred to as "heritage listeners".
Of course, the net helps. But it complicates my life, as I need to record the Radio Paradise stream and burn it to CDR so I can have some decent music in my vehicle. (and, of course, I can't find a stream recorder that will just do 30-min chunks repeatedly)
I'm a realist, and I understand that radio has passed on. Doesn't mean I don't miss it.
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
And salon has posted articles:o la /index.html
5 /s fx/index.html
http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2001/03/14/pay
http://www.salon.com/business/feature/2000/07/2
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Or The Macarena?
Or Boy Bands?
Or Brittney Spears?
Or Who Let The Dorks- Er- Dogs out?
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
for all I know they are in on it too, but where ever I live I have usually listened to the local college radio stations. They play a variety of music and I dont have to listen to the prepackged crap (too much).
-Skrim
So I don't have to deal with this. I get my music online so I don't have to listen to what I don't want to. Public radio rules and so to people who have stations that are small enought to not be nabbed by the fcc.
And the only people who make money out of it in the end are the lawyers.
You make a good point though its not wrong for gorcery stores to do what they do considering that they own the space.
Honestly other than FCC stuff I find it hard to believe that Payola is wrong considering it is the stations choice as to what they play. However I can see it becasue they have such an influence to thier market.
You cant call up a radio station and tell them you want to listen to some other song (unless its all request nite). In a grocery store you are free to pay attention to or ignore any products offered to you. Its only a problem when 1 soda, cereal, milk what ever company buys ALL the shelf space or does some type of microsoftesque deal.
"Don't mess with him, he taunts the happy fun ball."
I agree I was just clearing up the grocery store analogy. I agree that Payola is wrong: Honestly other than FCC stuff I find it hard to believe that Payola is wrong considering it is the stations choice as to what they play. However I can see it becasue they have such an influence to thier market. Its not really due to license of the public airwaves (though through the license is how it is enforced). It is the fact that these are public entities and have the ability to change the minds of the public at large with thier corprate views. This was for the grocery store poster who thought it was a bd thing to sell endcap space: You cant call up a radio station and tell them you want to listen to some other song (unless its all request nite). In a grocery store you are free to pay attention to or ignore any products offered to you. Its only a problem when 1 soda, cereal, milk what ever company buys ALL the shelf space or does some type of microsoftesque deal. As I said its not bad that grocery stores do this so long as they dont allow the big guys to muscle out the little ones, though this does happen.
"Don't mess with him, he taunts the happy fun ball."
One of the local "alternative" rock stations (how can they be an "alternative" when there's so many of them, and they're all the same?) just completed a weekend of programming that was not based on their usual rotation system.
Basically, the DJ's dug up some of their old (and new) favorites and played those instead. Oh, it wasn't like they went too far out on a limb... they were all songs that had been played on the station at one time or another, when they were "current".
Still, the listener response was overwhelmingly positive, with comments such as "Man, I haven't heard some of that stuff in a while. You guys should do this more often!" The DJ's agreed, but sadly they were back to playing the same old schlock on Monday morning. Why? The payola system, most likely.
Sad.
I take drugs seriously.
No middleman.
Just good, direct, product-placement / advertising.
yes, yes, they don't play much music any more, but, in the sake of fairness + equalizing media assaults, I wonder why MTV+VH1+whatever haven't been mentioned or investigated?
Contrast that with the Good Old Days. When I studied broadcasting in the late 1970s, the rules were that no single company could own more than seven AM stations, seven FM stations, and five TV stations (I think they may have gotten two more UHF stations, but no one cared about UHF then). And, they couldn't own more than one of each in a given market.
You can argue that cable and internet broadcasting make ownership concentration of on-air stations irrelevant, but I don't buy it. Lots of people still listen to lots of radio, and their opportunity to hear diverse programming (in the real sense, not just artificial formats) has been drastically reduced in the last twenty years.
I like that word, apesh. I think you just coined a new word. Don't get apesh about it, though. I think any dictionary that's not apesh oughta carry this word. Apesh. Apesh. Yes, I like this new word. Should it be pronounced "ayp-ish" or "uh-pesh", though. Depends on where yer from, probably. I like this word. Thanks.
information is immaterial
information is immaterial
Radio is not dead and it wont die anytime soon.
Many people predicted the death of dead-tree newspapers and books, because the Internet would be able to deliver news and entertainment to everyone in cheap, convenient handheld devices.
Well, dead-tree media still exists, handhelds are still expensive and wireless connections are still scarce, expensive and doesnt work inside Metro (Subway, Underground, whatever your country calls this kind of train) tunnels. Paper does.
Radio will still be among us in portable units (like Sonys WalkMan) and cars, specially when you consider the lack of bandwith (read previous paragraph) to stream mp3 to portable units.
And theres the price subject. Anyone can aford a $20 AM/FM radio, but $200 for an MP3 player is too much, add to this the cost of broadband wireless connection for streaming, and... well, you get the picture...
What ? Me, worry ?
I think its because the number of people interested in the differences between Word 6 and Wordperfect 6 and WordPro 6 was much bigger than those that wanted actual technical details on things such as chip design or how to create a circuit. After the web became popular Byte got killed him they tried to because a business magazine. I think Jerry Pournelle talked about this.
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
Sheesh. Another anonymous coward. As for your argument: sez you. What 'real world' do you have special access to that I do not? As I understand it the original impetus for the FCC was to bring some order to the airwaves. I believe a major incident leading up to that was the sinking of the Titanic, during which emergency message traffic was lost in the wash of clever little 'hi there' messages sent back and forth by the well-to-do who monopolized the radio men on the ship. At any rate the result was that the airwaves, not being owned (or in fact ownable) by anyone, were therefore public property, and one's right to monopolize them was given to them by the public's assent. Take away that assent and you lose your FCC license.
/. now who, whenever their actual argument holds little to no weight, haul out the 'You are a Randite drone living in a fantasy world' bludgeon and beat their opponent about the face and neck with it. All I've managed to gather from this is that Rand is no longer as popular as she was in the '70s. I wouldn't know whether her work was valid or not since I've never fucking read it, but you wouldn't know that that either, Mr. Ad Hominem who posts anonymously, would you?
The point, which you utterly and completely failed to get, was that we allow the radio stations to exist, but we do not have to. We could have chaos in their place. The means by which a radio station achieves their position as a supplier of transmitted signals is socialistic in nature. It is a government-granted monopoly on a frequency of the airwaves, and it's probably best that it remains in the purview of the government for the reasons I've outlined above. So I find it amusing that asking that radio station to transmit something that remotely coincides with the public's interest is painted "socialism" with all the implications thereof, which are supposed to be so repugnant to good red-blooded Americans. Or at least all those who have surrendered their faculty for independent thought to the mindless majority.
And where did you get the 'Ayn Rand' shit? I've seen probably a dozen people on
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Word gets out, Slashdot spigots spouts torrents of nasty verbage at grocery stores for selling space on end-caps.
Heavens to hell, now how is Joe Six Pack ever going to get his instant-maple-flavored-mash potatoes with new SuperCheezyKrapomatic potatoes staring him the face!
Its obvious, he is being forced to buy into these new potatoes, the refuse to let him pass down the isle to try the "other brands"
Slashdot versus the RIAA.
It happens in nearly every industry.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Damn I had to endure the 13 cookies and two pop up windows a second time...
I completely agree. Ever since our station in Cleveland (107.9 The End) went to rap, I completely stopped listening to the radio. Period. I have tried to better the cause by going on a AM radio station at my college, but, I find that no one really wants to be enlightened anymore. When I was playing great ska bands like Less than Jake or Aquabats, I would get requests for Marilyn Manson et al. After a while, I just quit, now I do my normal MP3 hunt, and my CD burner is busier because of it.
I'd be willing to put money on it being Rosie 105. This is a station that changes formats every few years, and plays the same damn thing all day long. Currently it's Top 40 crap.
Ratguy
I can't really figure out why anyone is surprised by all this. I mean, how else can you explain "The Pina Colada Song"?
Blows yer mind, don't it?
CrazyLegs
"Pork!!" said the Fish, and we all laughed.
And I apologize for the United States of America for being total bastards in just about everything they can seize control of. I also apologize for the numerous human rights abuses (murder, propping up puppet dictators in exchange for exploiting the human workforce and/or stealing natural resources, having politicians with less moral shame than the $2 prostitute, and breaking all treaties as if they never existed). I apologize for being so apathetic to the world's problems (though to be honest, it doesn't seem the rest of the world's nations seem to give a fuck either about insane despot dictators which the United States happily funds via the CIA).
Feel better? Didn't change a damn thing did it. All these issues still exist and apologies haven't changed things one bit. Perhaps the desire for comfort and consistency is the very thing damning the United States and the world along with it. So fuck you all if you ARE NOT NERVOUS and MORE VIGILANT.
"Face it, a nation that maintains a 72% approval rating on George W. Bush is a nation with a very loose grip on reality.
EXACTLY!! Australia has an excellent local band scene (like most countries Id guess) if you care to listen.
TripleJ is the only major station here in Australia not to play your typical plastic top 40 music. It is goverment funded and doesnt have to give a fuck about major record companies. I don't listen to anything else myself, almost on principle.
Sure I also hear a lot of crap on TripleJ, but it's not the cringe/soppy/lovey shit that America seems to churn out. It's usually just some band which just doesnt play my style of music.
Overall though, TripleJ play *what they want to play* and what they want to play usually correlates somewhat with what I want.
They also have a competition called unearthed that occurs several times a year which locates the best band in a given part of the country (ANYONE is eligible) and gives that band recording time and initial airplay.
Americans may have heard of a band called Silverchair - they were discovered in the unearthed competition.
So I guess my message is, if you want to hear music that makes you think and is the music you enjoy, you have to do some searching yourself, don't hear whats on the freakin mainstream radio stations and think that "that is where music is at".
I play guitar, I love real music written by the performing artist, always will, many others love it too. Unfortunately we will always be a minority.
I guess this helps to explain why the last good alternative/rock station got bought out in my town and switched over to YET ANOTHER classic rock station. It also explains why the one main teenie bopper station plays Britney and Destiny's Child every hour. They're all getting 'paid' to put some of that crap on air, instead of making a concerted effort to play whatever people want to hear. Which is why I listen to burned CD's from my collection of purchased CD's. Oh yes, there is a purpose for copying CD's. So I don't have to listen to the radio (which record companies push their boy-bands on), and I don't have to worry about the originals that are OUT-OF-PRINT being stolen from my car. A $.50 copied CD is a lot less of a loss to me than $16!
This typeashit goes on in College Radio too. Except you don't actually have to play the music, just put it in your playlist that you report to CMJ and Gavin. They know that college radio's reach is small.. but the charts still matter to them so they still pay for promotions. And they don't give you such great shit. They grant you interviews and give you 10-20 tickets to the big festival and give you 6 tickets to every show and tons of extra free CDs.. but.. no cash and definitely no cocaine.
Elmore Leonard wrote a Chili Palmer book involving the music industry in LA, the indy promoters, and wise guys, called Be Cool.
Chili Palmer, you may recall, is the protagonist of Get Shorty, involving the motion picture industry in LA, movie stars, and wise guys.
John Travolta played him in the movie. Yeah, that dude. And the nifty jazz trumpet riff. You remember it. "It's the Cadillac of minivans".
Be Cool is its sequel. And it's typically good Elmore Leonard.
--Blair
I can't afford a car
I wanna be a prefab
SUPERSTAR!
So when it comes to radio, my solution was to simply give up a few years ago. When I HAVE to listen the radio (i.e: borrowed car with no CD player) I usually stick to the newscast-only radio stations, which are not that bad. When it cames to TV, at least we produce our own trash...
http://playpal.com, coming to a radio station near you.
He is being sarcastic, but he brings up a worthwhile point. Have you ever gone into a store with a magazine rack, and inquired as to whether they might carry a magazine you might be interested in?
They can't do it. They don't handle that part of the store. Some big corporation has an arrangement to manage those racks. They keep them stocked. They decide which magazines to carry, and whether to place them in the front row.
So, what happened to BYTE? BYTE was a truly excellent magazine. It was once the premier computer magazine. But then computers became really popular, and BYTE became harder to find. Crappier, more homogenized, less informative magazines started squeezing BYTE out. How the heck did that happen?
I figured it was a triumph of marketing muscle over editorial excellence.
Hold on there cowboy. The airwaves are a shared resource. Broadcast bandwidth is a shared resource. How did this multi-million dollar industry get access to this shared resource?
They got a liscence based on promises made to a body mandated to make sure the airwaves are used in a way that serves the public. They don't own them. The have a liscense to use them.
The "public good" is not a communist invention. Sheesh.
Your intellectual points would appear more meaningful if you didn't post anonymously.
This explains a lot really.
I just *knew* that Brittney Spears (or some other pre-fab trendy pop-artist du jour) wasn't making it on talent alone.
But why do people buy into it? Pre-fab groups have been around since the Monkees, and the record companies keep churning out these low or no talent groups who have the right look, and the fans snap up the albums/concert tickets/schwag...
The way I see it, if there are dancers on stage, and no sign of a live band, the music is almost certainly crap.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
The great thing is, this doesn't bother the radio station at all. Its all about percieved popularity, they don't have anything like the Neilsons to actually figure out how many people listen to them, at least in this area.
...What really happens in small market Radio. Sattelite companies like Jones Sattelite Services taken a good 60 to 70% share of small market radio stations. The math is simple:
Cost of Jock: $7-$20/hour
Cost of Jones Sattelite Services: One minute/Hour.
In exchange for using their music and their jocks, you let them play one minute's worth of ads during an hour. Everything's digital until it hits the stations, and they can even use like a song2web interface to show the tracks of the playing songs (as it comes off of the sat receiver) on your webpage to make it 'look' local.
What does this mean for Radio? Not a whole lot of new jobs are being created as old jobs are being phased out.
You integrate something like AudioVault (Audio-on-SCSI-Drive-On-Demand) with a Sattelite Receiver (which they provide for you), 100 lines of code and a sattelite dish can run your station as long as you need it. There are windows for news, weather, and the such, so you can pull a feed from CNN Radio Network News and bump out with a "C" liner into music. Who needs a jock when you've got a PC?
----
Ian
ONU's Finest Computer Sciences Geek
I disable sigs...do you?
I wonder if Katz is trying his luck with someone else's name on the article... :)
Let's look a little closer at Clear Channel which is disparaged in the Salon article and owns over 1100 of the radio stations playing crap for $$$$: Clear Channel was founded by "Red" McCombs. Red owns the Minnesota Vikings and the San Antonio Spurs. Fans of those teams have payola to thank. Also, Red just donated I think over $20 million to the University of Texas, one of the greatest donations ever to a university. As a UT alumni I say thanks! Now, Tom Hicks is the major owner of Clear Channel. Mr. Hicks also owns the Texas Rangers (yea, the team that paid A-Rod $250 million) and the Dallas Stars (Stanley Cup baby). If some record label is willing to pay Clear Channel to play Britney Spears songs so unwitting consumers will purchase one of her albums, fine with me. That revenue supports my teams and my alma-mater. Oh yea, Tom Hicks is a UT alumni and major donor, too. If we didn't have payola that money would probably stay with the record labels in NY and LA. Who wants that?
Users of the LA Times website have noticed that so called "pop up" advertisements appear when loading news stories. This has led some to believe that money is being made. LA Times editors could not be reached for immediate comment, but we spoke with MSNBC executives who assure us that these claims are unfounded. "The press is fair and unbiased. Moreover, we don't make money, we lose money--to bring the best news to the citizens of the world"
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what are there, like maybe FIVE companies that control the recording industry? and like five more media conglomerates that control, say 85% of the airwaves.... ? You do the math... is anyone surprised. This has been a well known issue to anyone in the industry for years (obviously). It takes a "scandal" like this for it to resurface in the news. Don't worry. It will all be forgetten in a day or two.
Those that suggest you "dance like no one is watching" really want to see you make a complete fool of yourself.
"In a working day (9-5), one station would play the same songs four times during the course of the day."
Dont know where you live, but here in Stockholm, Sweden the ratio can be up to 10, 15 times / day.
...um...like...a sig...
We also apologize for Celine Dion.
Now leave us be! Please!
If you listen to commercial radio for more than a week, it's obvious that they're not appealing to what the listeners want. Even if you like that kind of music, how many times can you possibly want to listen to 'get your freak on'? The same songs are played over, and over again..
If anything I would guess that hurts CD sales. If you already heard the song so much on the radio (once an hour, every hour) that you're sick of it, why buy the CD?
So if they're not playing these songs to please the listeners, who are they trying to please? Hmmm... whoever paid them the most, I guess.
-Johnny 5000
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
[rant]
And the recording industry wonders why sites like Napster sprung up? People got sick of listening to the same songs over and over, but Napster allowed them to choose what they wanted to hear. In a working day (9-5), one station would play the same songs four times during the course of the day. And not just one song, but a small group of them.
I don't even listen to the radio much now, except as background noise while driving. Even then, I'll surf NPR or news stations as well.
[/rant]
It's widely known throughout the industry that MTV is "buyable" too with certain aspects of their network. For example, I know for a fact that there have been certain bands that have been made "Buzzworthy" for the right price. Hell, how do you think MTV get's all of the acts for half of their concerts. It's just a trade out, the band plays the concert for free or for a small price, and magically their play rate goes up for their video.
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My sig of choice is Marlboro
I can tell you this sort of thing happens every day. I have seen numerous times when we needed a prize to give away for a summer or fall book promotion and normally our indie or record label would "donate" a prize in exchange for us playing a new song in late night rotation. Take a listen to your favorite station between midnight and 5am and see how many new songs are playing that you normally don't hear. About 70% of all the songs we played on the overnight shift were favors to labels or indies. It's just one of those things that everyone in the industry knows about and kind of accepts. But to be honest, it's nice for the pd to have a big screen tv shipped to his house so the record companies can show their appreciation. Hell, I've even seen an extra jet ski and trailer sent to a station on "accident".
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My sig of choice is Marlboro
If it weren't for the music business we would all have to actually visit Orlando to sample the freshest new beats for the cool new hip generation.
Also, we wouldn't have the same handful of pop giants illuminating our brief lives with new insights and charming melodies year after year.
Check out this link to find out what corporations own the media companies. There is another site (sorry, no link) that shows the number of companies who produce virtually all (90%) of the media consumed in the U.S. It used to be over a hundred companies but now is less than six. I think that RICO should be applied to them.
The Dead Kennedy's had something to say about the payola thing back in the day (~1980) that is still relevant today--as all good art is:
The music we hear is decided upon in six boardrooms by racketeers. That's laissez faire for ya'."What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
Yes Napster is useless now because they have overfiltered, fuck you can't even type in a broad search like Play cause oh my there is a Jennifer Lopez song with that title so you have to type in J Lopes to find her songs....scratch that...now that i have leaked out the unfiltered name Napster will probably filter Jlopes too.
-OR_BraveHeart "there's nothing certain in life except death and taxes"
I don't get it. The same people who went apesh** trying to shut down a service that promoted their work for free are paying radio stations to broadcast to a non-paying audience. I've said it before and I'll say it again. It has nothing to do with revenue, and everything to do with control. What's wrong with this picture?
The months are just too short. I can count the number of days on one hand.
I'm a DJ at a college radio station (WRFL in Lexington, KY) and can really identify with people's disgust in mainstream radio. I just hope they don't think all radio is like that. Public radio has long been a champion of non-commercial, underground, good music WAY before the Internet and music became synonymous. Particularly college radio stations that operate on shoe-string budgets with volunteer DJs that are highly knowledgable about all types of music and devote themselves to exposing it to a wider audience. We've been fighting tooth and nail with the corporate mainstream since day one and deserve some respect. Not all radio sucks. Some stations (ehem, such as my own) go out of their way to provide an audience with good music. We don't get paid. Operate 24 hours a day (which means some poor DJ is sitting there on a 3am - 6am shift). Take money out of our own pockets to buy CDs to play for the general public. Enforce rules to keep the mainstream out of our programming. *At WRFL there is a rule where you cannot play the same song from the same band more than once in a SIX HOUR period. (As opposed to 20 minutes on mainstream stations) Lately, we've even been ordering CDs from unsigned artists at mp3.com to but in our playbox for regular rotation! Internet music distribution is a wonderful new thing, but good radio should still be respected because it has benefits that "Internet radio" does not. So, don't hate radio, just hate the corporations that are whoring it out. Find a public or college radio station in your area, because you can support them just by listening.
...has anyone else wondered how in the hell that annoying "Play My Favorite Song" song has been getting any rotation at all? The song is about another non-existant? song. Someone is definitely getting bribed to play that crapola. "J-LO" needs to stick to the big screen, at least David Hasselhoff has the sense to not write songs about other songs LOL!
I was just wondering if anyone thinks that Satellite radio will help or hurt the industry in general. As far as I'm concerned Radio can't get any worse than it is now. Just wanted to see what everybody elses opinion of this is.