Slashdot Mirror
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."
I'm sure this will get modded down as flamebait... but isn't this just an effective form of advertisement for the record or digital download? If the Mattress Superstore down the street can buy ad time on the radio, why not record labels? I'd rather listen to a 5 minute Avril Lavigne song than 5 more minutes of ads (although it is a pretty close call.)
I understand why traditional payola is verbotten, but this seems like a legitimate ad placement. Indeed, given how inexpensive radio advertising is at the local level (outside of drive time) I'm surprised small local bands haven't already grabbed onto this idea.
I know the RIAA and such is evil, but come on... as my grandfather used to say, even a broken watch is right twice a day.
jrjBlog
I see a lot of this on TV. Shows with audiences and amazing products that will change your life. Its one big paid advertisement.
How is this any different? Except they have to pay for a lot of time (2-3 minutes) of ad time.
There's no way this is new. I have a very small record label and this is something we've been talking about and doing for quite some time now.
"You think I care about the pea-brained yokels of this town. I can't stand those sniveling maggots! They make me want to puke. But there is one good thing about broadcasting to a town full of mindless sheep: I always know I've got them exactly where I want them."
- R.J. Fletcher, "UHF"
that if someone has to pay a radio station to play a song, then chances are that the song is not that good?
usually a song sells itself to people and any good song shouldn't have to pay to be played.. if the listeners want to hear it, they will play it but they would be playing it for the wrong reasons if paid.
tells enough about the industry of 'making' a hit, rather than a hit being a hit because it's good.
when they use money to make hits.. I fail to see why I should give them money for that.
ba ba baaaaaaa.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
It seems kind of strange that the law should require any of this. If you want to charge for airtime on your radio station, you should be able to. And if nobody wants to pay you, then tough Schitt.
With 30 seconds of air time costing a few hundred dollars on even the smaller radio stations, I wonder how much it costs to play a three minute song? I don't see how it really matters in the scheme of things though. We're already inundated with this crap as it is. Why someone would want to pay to have it played when so many stations are paying royalties to play it on their own? Someone wake me up when a decent radio station hits the air. Then maybe I'll care if someone is getting payola.
60 percent of the time, my comments are right everytime.
They want us to listen to this music. However, we still have to make up our own minds about whether we like it enough to buy the entire album or not. Wouldn't the record labels perhaps save their advertising dollars by promoting a special download of Avril's song somewhere? Instead we get to have this song shoved to our, already bleeding, ears.
Hmmm.
Agreed. Music radio sucks. If I want music, I'll listen to what I want when I want it with my own music collection. As a news outlet, radio stations such as NPR are still great sources for news, especially on the move... At least NPR hasn't been fawning over Reagan 24/7 for the last few days.
Not more than you need, just more than you want
I don't mean this as flamebait... I guess I just don't understand why paying for airtime is disallowed to begin with. I think the RIAA has a lot of underhanded tactics, and skirting laws is yet another one, but I don't know why there's a law to begin with. Seems like we all love to champion open competition and free markets as long as people stay within the rules, why is paying a radio station to play music any different? Perhaps I just need a lesson in radio economics. :/
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
So are you claiming that they shouldn't be allowed to advertise their products? If so, why not?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I hear it at work(I'm a student working at a fast food place for my summer job, at least for now).
The restaurant has a policy of having it only on an available "pop" station. When I work an 8 hour day shift I'll hear the same "song" 3 times sometimes. To be naive: this is a radio station that apparently doesn't even have enough music to fill up an 8 hour spot, so they have to repeat songs. I've got enough casettes just in my car to fill up a four day spot, and I'm not a radio station. And I'd guarantee I'd actually play something that, at least, resembled music.
So, I'm still wondering: if the "song" is really an "advertisement" for the purposes of regulation, why does it count towards a billboard rating?
And if adds do count, why isn't Moby the top rated artist of all time (by virtue of his popularity on Madison Ave.)?
credo quia absurdum
Yes, some people still do. I run a show out of the local university here, and we've plenty of listeners, because we a) make our own playlists and our own decisions, b) actually consider playing what people want to hear, and c) generally play nothing but good music--no corporate bullshit.
I do agree with your sentiments to some extent that before I discovered indie/nonprofit radio stations such as my own and a few under the Pacifica banner, I hated all radio and preferred the noise of my car engine to anything they were playing over the airwaves.
But once you've started listening to public radio, my friends, you'll never look back.
Honestly, payola is one of those things that's going to happen, like drinking and college kids smoking pot.
I'd rather the corruption be out in the open than live under the false belief that, gasp, good music might be favored by DJs.
Finally, it'd put an end to all the pollyannish stories crying that the purity of Big Corporate Music has been betrayed.
Check out my blog: My Galaxy is Milky Way Adjacent
I used to listen to the FM music radio stations all the time about 10-15 years ago, when I was a kid. I never listened to the mainstream genres of the day, being more interested in 60s and 70s rock, blues, jazz. It was bad enough that the playlists seemed to only get smaller and the number of commercials were increasing, but you could still hear great songs.
Now I can't remember when it was the last time I did that. Even in my car, I only listen to the AM news stations, and even that mostly for the traffic reports (living in Toronto it's suicide not to, you can get stuck for hours on the 401 if you're not aware of accidents). With the consolidation under ClearChannel and Standard Radio, sometimes I can't even tell the difference between stations, they're ALL playing the same music more or less.
Now that the RIAA, and probably the CRIA (the RIAA's Canadian offspring) soon, are paying to have the same song played constantly, they have pretty much guaranteed I will never listen to music on the radio again.
Sorry for the rant, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way.
First off, everything that the labels are doing is perfectly legal and its up to the a. radio station to make the decision or b. the consumer to make the decision.
While there are very few of us that don't prefer radio today, there are those that are perfectly happy listening to the same song over and over again regardless of how good it is.
I think that's one of the key items. The norm is now 'created' by those with the money to influence it. If it's playing on the radio 90 percent of the time, it must be popular. Right? There's almost nothing in the way of choice of genre, but then again, I suppose there never was. Aren't we supposed to be moving forward?
These are just my views anyway...
One thing that holds true is that playing the same song over and over again, regardless of how good it is, destroys it -- and it's seems to be common practice.
Personally, I think that very little music today shows anything in the way of innovation or talent. There are a handful of artists that I enjoy listening too, but I'm happy to be able to put whatever I want into my CD player and listen to it. When my fiance tells me that she wants to listen to the radio instead, I CRINGE.
In the end, it's up to the sheep and we're all subjected to what they'll follow, so buckle up:)
I'll do you one better. The label promo dept decides they're having a hard time working the album at radio. So the band goes out on tour, and the label promo guy, in collusion with the band's manager, setup a team of kids around the country to go into record stores to buy the album. The retail stores report sales to radio and then the radio station either adds or bumps up the airplay because they think this is a "HIT". The kicker... the expense that is used to buy the artists albums is then billed back to the artist. The artist is paying to "buy" their own albums. This tactic has been going on since Elvis Presley was selling records. Lucious Jackson's career was built on this.
I'm not sharing a music file... I'm sharing a commercial !
Okay, Googled it, can't find the law, but I did find several interesting sites with commercials !
Anyone know the relevant laws ??? (Yeah, IANAFL).
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
the artist who knew the exact terms and conditions the instant they signed up with the label. So all 17-year-olds (such as Avril Lavigne) are wise enough to ignore the bullshit, read the small print, etc? Goodbye Troll
Instead of fighting the music labels, perhaps what people should lobby billboard magazine to set up an anonymous mp3 download tracker for each "official" mp3 version of a specific song.
Then the labels would then have an incentive for more people to download and listen to a specific "official" version of a song so that their rating points would go higher. This would likely put the appropriate down-pressure on the price of that "official" tagged version of a song (maybe even inspire "free-download" days)...
Note that this is all slightly tongue-in-cheek since the privacy experts will likely frown on this and probably the only reason for stunts like this (and other like prince giving away free cds at concerts) is that someone, somewhere has a weird performance bonus clause written a contract that makes this profitable for them, but of course probably less money from the person on the other side of the contract.
The record business is a pretty low-down business with all sorts of wacky contracts people use to screw each other out of the every shrinking money pie. I doubt it is possible to extrapolate the next wierd behavior before the contract people catch up to it...
Both use the same model of business. This ad/music would be equal to the Home Shopping Channel.
As long as you people are asleep at the wheel and don't know what a real FIX is then this will keep going on.
Ultimate answer is don't trust business to run our AIRWAVES. We own them and we can run them better than they can. Quit auctioning off our spectrum to the highest bidder and instead have government build enough towers to have high speed WiFi on all frequencies or use something better that comes along.
Why is it that the RIAA will pay a radio station $60,000 to play their songs, and then turn around and sue a 12 year old girl for effectively "rebroadcasting" their advertisement?
So, fans get sued by the RIAA for downloading the same music the RIAA paid a radio station to broadcast. How can one be piracy, but not the other? After all, why would I buy the CD if the radio plays it all the time? Doesn't it occur to the RIAA that music fans have no need to buy the CD if the radio station is always playing a particular artist's music?
I'm kind of curious as if there are any slashdotters brave enough to distribute mp3's of these "commercials" (in their entirety, of course...) and then send the RIAA and invoice for every file downloaded...
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Do artists have a viable choice?
Perhaps, see here for Robert Fripp's solution.
SteveM
Why don't the labels simply buy (or create) radio stations for themselves? Then they could skip the ad-placement phase and cut right to the playing of stuff they want to push.
Come to think of it, why not buy (or create) record stores too?
How about venues for concerts?
Are there some sort of laws against record labels owning radio stations/record stores/performance venues?
I mean, c'mon, if you're going to tell people what to like and then charge them to get it, do it right.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Instead of writing crappy music and trying to be superstars by selling their souls to the record company, maybe they could try writing honest music and making an honest living off it. It is possible.
It costs $2,000 to buy a computer and eight input interface with software to make a demo record. You can buy 1,000 CDs with color labels and jewel cases for about $950. One of the best mastering engineers in the world, Rodney Mills, can be hired for $10 per song minute.
+$2,000
+$0,950
+$0,500
-------
$3,450
This is, of course, assuming you already have instruments and a couple of mics. My guess is that most of the bands who have no viable option also have no viable talent without PR and good photography.
Here's a point I was babbling about in another thread: I sense that more and more people are coming around to the idea that they don't give a sh1t what's "popular" anymore. When that stance sinks in (and when the "listening audience" becomes collectivelly sophisti-muh-cated enough to know how to find stuff they DO like), this kind of 'advertising' mechanism will become unsustainable, unprofitable, and help take down the RIAA-pwn3d part of the industry, hallelujah and amen.
And, a big thumbs-up to your links to Furthurnet and SharingtheGroove - and might I throw in a BitTorrent here and a thankewe to artists everywhere who allow taping and trading?
This is fine, good and noble, but it leaves out the point of the article, advertising and distribution.
If lables control the airwaves, how do you get the word out that you have a great band? Many(most?)people who love music only rarely get out to hear it live. Their primary source of info about new sounds is the radio. If the major lables are paying to have the airwaves play their artists tunes, how do the little guys with no money get heard?
In theory, radio airplay is about the songs that people want to hear. According to this article, and a well-known history of corupt payola, its really about what the record lables want you to hear. If you could fix that, you'd be a lot closer to me buying into the argument that the little band has a choice about signing with a lable.
TW
Yes, they have plenty of choices.
The biggest choice is to hire a f'n non-industry sponsored attorney. I have a good one that represents only artists and folks in that vein (I count in the 'vein' part as I support the artists through production and songwritting)...he immediately killed several standard clauses from my last few contracts and the lable didn't blink an eye. We modifed several others and included a few of our own (that needed some negotiation...luckily it was just papers being passed back and forth for a week).
Anyone that knows anything about the industry knows this is common practice. Any idiot that signs any piece of paper without someone there that is impartial (or more preferably only profits if you profit) deserves the bullshit they have signed.
As a member of the industry, I have no pitty for idiots that don't think they have a choice and are willing to sell their soul to get what they want. These kids effectly sell the rights to all their future profits in the hopes of fame. They soon learn you can't live off of fame alone and then bitch that the big bad record company screwed them over. I know several not so successful (in terms of sales) artists that live a LOT better than the kids I have to put up with because they had better representation -- they didn't get their albums whored like a motherfucker, but in the end, as its a living they were after and not fame and glory, they do well.
So fuck anyone that says otherwise...and fuck idiots like DownHill Battle who couldn't get a deal if their life depended on it because they never had the talent.
Actually, I agree with you.... once the infrastructure is in place. Right now internet radio quality is abysmal and only a tiny number of people can get it in their car. Once those problems are fixed, it'll be a whole new world.
The reason the major lables control the airwaves now is because of the limited supply of radio stations. The internet promises to one day fix that but right now it can only compete on an unlevel playing field.
TW
Yeah - I never understand how people can discuss that music in any creative context. How is it even an issue whether you like Avril as a musician or not? She's a friggin instrument in the producer's inventory, only marginally more important than the bass guitar.
The whole "pop stars" reality TV phenominon made it even more transparent, and people still don't care. At least the corporate shill bands of the '90s were involved in the writing process (even if half of the harmonizing and mixing was done by producers).
All I ask is that the songs be associated with the person who made the music, not some ditzy little flake who teens want to fuck.
They bought 40 one-minute chunks of commercial airtime on KFRC-AM radio in San Francisco, and played every track of their brilliant 1980 LP The Commercial Album.
"Commercial Radio" was the perfect format for The Commercial Album because every track is exactly 60 seconds long.
Viva The Residents!
If lables control the airwaves, how do you get the word out that you have a great band? Weblogs, mix CDs, word of mouth, p2ps and indie media are very important. Also some of the more influential radio stations programs and DJs like Morning Becomes Ecclectic on KCRW and John Peel on the BBC are not controlled. Likewise many artists on major labels still pursue artistically credible careers without having their music paid to play and still get the distribution. If a band wants to persue a huge, global pop star career.. well, there aren't many choices. However musicians can still lead very normal lives, make a good income and stay artistically credible today too. The idea of major label control only works in the pop sphere. Right now we are in pop times but if the modern history of music tells us anything this will all come to pass soon. As hip-pop and slock-pop hits disco levels of excess all it will take is one watershed even like the Disco Demolition Night before people start printing their Avirl/Eminem/Britney Sucks t-shirts on cafepress. We actually have more choices than ever. Awareness of the greater world of music is what brings on this discussion. The major label hegemony conspiracy is always taken out of historical context.
_nfotxn
"Secondly, enough distribution and advertising to become a hot item without the major labels in our current culture is near impossible due to several things:"
This is not true. A large number of artists start out on small independent labels, and then sign on to one of the big 5 as their popoularity increases and they want more exposure. REM is one example I can think of off-hand. They used to be on IRS, then they moved to Warner Bros.
"2) An absolute stranglehold on the lawmaking institution due to heavy political lobbying."
When it's considered a crime for a label to pay for a radio station to play their song, that's hardly a stranglehold on politiicans. It seems more like a first amendment violation, and certainly an attack on free trade.
Vote for Pedro
Where can one get something like KCRW in a moving vehicle outside of California? Has mobile Internet access progressed to that point?
I don't understand why people think that the orderly, predictable nature of payola is somehow worse than having some random druggie DJ choosing overproduced songs based on his or her own tastes...we all have different tastes, and for me, having my ears proxied by some random stranger who just weaseled his way into a corporate DJ job is really no more attractive to me than being advertised to. Hint: Both options suck. Turn off the radio. Didn't you see the movie Airheads? You're just mad because you've been suckers since Motown, believing that some young, pure, messianic songwriter has just magically ascended to the top of the heap and into your view, when really every single band who has ever participated in the music industry has blood on their hands. Yes, even your special favorite one. Your hero is a whore.
:( :( :( Aurally indentured ambivalence!! Consumptively co-opted codependency!! Mrr! Me0w Me0w!
Listen to music made by people you know. If their music sucks, meet more people. This is the indy way. People listened to folk music, made by friends and family for thousands of years, and now suddenly as of the 20th century, everyone has been made tremendously lazy due to marketed convenience, and people act like "good" music can only come from a giant corporate juggernaut, and to make matters worse, this *elective* juggernaut needs to operate the way I want it to, or I am going to whine!
In my car, the radio is what happens when I eject the CD. Fuck a radio.
If you don't like the idea of a commercial radio station engaging in COMMERCE, then don't LISTEN to a COMMERCIAL radio station. Listen to one of the many not for profit radio stations out there like http://www.ipmradio.com or http://www.di.fm/.