Sony Agrees to Stop Payola

dsginter writes "Sony BMG Music just reached agreement with New York Attorney General. Sony spokesman John McKay admitted that the practice was 'wrong and improper' but the company engaged in the activity anyway. They were fined $10 million and have agreed to obstain from the practice in the future. Is this the first step toward getting our airwaves back or is this just a slap on the wrist?"

Comments

Meh - American Radio is beyond hope

[sien]

US TV, films etc are pretty good, but other than NPR American free to air Radio is beyond hope. Having one channel own almost all the stations is effective death.

Payola, while unpleasant, is nothing to people who are carefully creating radio to only be sports, 80s hits and right wing shock jocks.

But, fortunately, there is satelite with some variety but above all else the internet.

Australian radio, in contrast to US radio, is vibrant, brilliant and is a good industrial subsidy for the Australian music industry (ever wonder where INXS, Midnight Oil and many others got their start?).

If you want to check it out over the net check out JJJ, RRR, 3PBS and enjoy some streaming quality alternative interesting radio for a change.

Re:Meh - American Radio is beyond hope

[donscarletti]

Yes, Australian radio is absolutely brilliant. We have the always balanced and insightful John Laws and Alan Jones to bring enlightenment to us, we have the infinitely tallented Kyle and Jackie-O bringing us culture over the Austereo network who's stations in every capital city always play an ecclectic and always fresh selection of artistic music written by Australia and the World's most tallented musicians.

Granted, I've never been to North America but I find it a little tricky to swallow that anyone could have music that makes our crappy radio sound "vibrant and brilliant". Sure, JJJ has integrity (as do all the ABC stations) but that's because it's federally funded explicitly to stop kids from becoming as much of idiots as they would have been if they turned on Nova instead. Australian radio sucks, and sucks hard.

Wow!

[jav1231]

Some of the memo's are pretty revealing. FSN has a story on some of it. "We ordered a laptop for Donnie Michaels at WFLY in Albany. He has since moved to WHYI in Miami. We need to change the shipping address." One Sony memo from 2002: "Can you work with Donnie to see what kind of digital camera he wants us to order?" Looks like Rush was right: "glittering prizes and endless compromises shatter the illusion of integrity, yeah!"

Re:Of course it's a slap on the wrist!

[Emil Brink]

I know I'm being silly, but it was actually explained like this in ... the article:

A 1960 federal law and related state laws bar record companies from offering undisclosed financial incentives in exchange for airplay. The practice was called "payola," a contraction of "pay" and "Victrola," the old wind-up record player.

Not being from an English-speaking country myself either, I thought I'd eye the article hoping they would be internally consistent and define the term. They were, and they did. I bet this could be used to try and teach some kind of lesson, but let's not go there. :)

NY AG

[Dolphineus53]

Payola is nothing new. Anyone who is surprised that this is going on was just unaware that the practice has been around as long as radio.

My big question is this ... when is New York state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer running for a bigger office? He seems to have a knack for getting headlines with high profile cases that get everyone all fired up.

From http://www.nynewsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/w ire/sns-ap-clinton-2006,0,1068438.story?coll=sns-a p-nation-headlines
the poll showed state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer continuing to hold a double-digit lead over the three-term governor in a possible matchup for the 2006 gubernatorial campaign.

Re:Of course it's a slap on the wrist!

[Gonarat]

Payola is a term that dates back to the late 1950's when Rock and Roll was just getting started. Back then, AM radio was king, radio stations were independently owned (no Clear Channel), and DJs had a lot of control over what they played, especially at night.

To keep it simple, what happened is that music labels began offering DJs money to play their songs. Music producers began targeting the AM stations ran high power at night since these "clear channel" (nothing to do with the company) stations could be heard for hundreds, if not thousands of miles at night.

In the end, the Feds had to step in and put a stop to this practice. Payola, as it was called, was ended around 1960, but the labels found ways around the law through the use of "Indys" and such. The practice has gotten worse since the FCC allowed companies to own many radio stations. Do some googling if you want to learn more -- it is fascinating.