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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.
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
"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.
The only remaining concern is: if unsigned artists own the music they write (which they do), how do they get it played? And this is where the attention needs to be: internet access to unsigned musicians is a threat to the big labels because it could bleed off potential sales of Britney etc. Expect concerted efforts to eat up or destroy the internet services that offer music hosting (mp3.com is already done for- it is sold to Universal, and the contract has been changed under the artists' noses to a very dangerous one). Anything publically held is at risk: anything linked to the Big Five (like Farmclub) is like a 'honey trap', a snare for the unwary or stupid. It really is "take stuff off the market" land out there.
Yet, at the same time, the musicians are still out there, many with technical resources as good as what the majors use these days- and some of the internet sites are still there too. BeSonic is still there. Ampcast is not only still there, it's just gone live with its own CD order-fulfillment service. Some of these places (like Ampcast) are built on the mission of being an alternative rather than seizing the market: Ampcast's mission statement is all about being a useful indie alternative to the major labels, it's very informed of the cartel-like conditions that exist. More importantly, if Ampcast _did_ get taken over somehow (dunno how, it's not publically held and I'm not sure if it's even a corporation or holds stock), its contract continues to allow artists to bail out taking their music with them and taking the rights back- unlike mp3.com, where the place keeps a right to your stuff forever even if you bail.
The main thing is to keep the alternate routes alive. I feel the existing industry will go beyond the letter and spirit of the law in attempts to destroy even poorly-resourced, unpromoted indie musicians: for instance, I could imagine mp3s being made illegal through manipulating and paying off the government, and a new format decreed where you have to pay $60,000 to get one of the 12 licenses for generating the encrypted whatever-it-is. This is of course a shocking, extreme suggestion, but the point is that IT WOULD WORK as much as anything would (i.e. sort of...). Only the geekiest musicians would have the savvy or connections to be able to generate that format themselves through stolen encoders- and here's the BIG point- in doing so they would be BREAKING THE LAW! If the only public format is NOT a public format, you can't seek a public audience for your content unless you are legally allowed to generate the media.
That is the REAL killer: people burning bootleg CDs would be perfectly safe, but musicians with a legitimate reason to generate the format using their own content could be legally blocked from entering the market on the grounds of DMCA violation, illegal use of methods to circumvent copyright violation. It's the TOOLS that would land them in jail, their music would remain harmless and they'd have a right to it, but they would no longer have a right to put out their own media in the cartel-owned popular format.
Let's see to it that this never happens- continue to demand and support the original CD Audio (Red Book) format, because it is permissible to generate that without paying a controlling authority- and dare I say it, support mp3 despite Fraunhofer and the KNOWN legal problems with mp3. Something tells me Fraunhofer have their hands full with the problem of keeping their format relevant. Proposed alternatives could be much, much worse. Ideally we could switch to Ogg Vorbis: remains to be seen whether this can be practical. I hope so, mp3 is booby-trapped in a way that Red Book is not.
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*
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.
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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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.)
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
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
--
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.
--
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
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.
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-
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.
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."
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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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
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...
KLF knew it...
They exploited the system
Read "The Manual"
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.
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.
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
http://playpal.com, coming to a radio station near you.
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?
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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... :)
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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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
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?"