Labels Find New Method of Payola

rhadamanthus writes "The Houston Chronicle is reporting on the newest 'legal' payola tactic put forth by the record industry: playing the song as an advertisement. It seems that while it is illegal to pay a radio station to play a song, it is not illegal to play a song as an ad. Quoth the article, 'The practice is legal as long as the station makes an on-air disclosure of the label's sponsorship -- typically with an introduction such as "And now, Avril Lavigne's Don't Tell Me, presented by Arista Records."' Incidentally, that song was played 109 times in one week by Nashville station WQZQ-FM."

Comments

Why I switched to Sirius almost two years ago!

[neowolf]

No commercials (except for promoting their own stuff sometimes- like "Check out stream xxx for this!" type stuff), and as far as I can tell- no pay for play. Lots of variety, lots of station choices, no commercials, I can listen to the same station all across the country (I do a couple big road-trips a year). I love satellite radio! I can't stand the Clear Channel-ish crap that local radio in Denver (and most other major cities) has become.

Re:This is bad because why ?

[nitemayr]

The problem comes in when this comes from a conglomerate such as Clear channel, who, in some smaller markets is really the only choice in radio...there is your "why this is bad" It's not he concept of pay to play it is the fact that using this concept the choice is no longer there it's listen to this or listen to nothing, and that's not really a choice.