Tech Review Sites and Payola

cheesecake23 writes "How often have you read a hardware review and thought: 'No way was that an honest opinion, the reviewer was bought'—? The Daily Tech has gone undercover to find out whether or not payola is accepted among the 35 largest online English-language hardware review sites. Questions asked and answered — Q: How many sites would take money (or sell ads) in exchange for a product review? A: 20 percent. Q: How many sites would additionally consider selling an Editor's Choice award? A: None. Q: Were any regions of the world more corrupt than others? A: No, it was 20-25% almost everywhere. Q: Does it depend on the size or age of the site? A: RTFA. Although no bad actors were explicitly unmasked, the article contains enough information to make a whitelist of quite a few good guys."

Comments

Re:"Immorality" of radio payola?

[Sangui5]

There are other reasons to consider payola immoral, but there is a straightforward reason: if the DJ's only spin songs they've been payed to play, the those who can't pay won't get paid.

Simply put, payola keeps small artists and those without the backing of a well-monied party at a distinct disadvantage. The major labels certainly form an oligopoly, and, cartel or not, they have maintained their oligopoly through 1) control of the distribution chain, 2) buying out the supply of new talent, and 3) through squeezing small players from the most effective publicity channels. #1 is threatened by the internet, and is their largest problem right now. #2 is the fault of bands stupidly signing disadvantageous contracts; to a mild extend newer bands are wising up, though. #3 is still an issue. Payola is the direct way of doing it, and gave the majors their initial dominance. Nowadays, it is a little more discreet; "independent promoters" get money from the majors, and then they in turn turn over "stuff" to radio stations (stuff ranging from blatant cash bribes to concert tickets to give away through on-air contests). Direct or not, payola floods playlists with songs from well-funded labels, at the expense of smaller labels or self-produced bands which do not have the resources to buy their way onto playlists.

There is an exception; a record label can straight out pay to get a song played, but the radio station has to disclaim that it is a pay-for-play, and the amount of airtime devoted to pay-for-play is limited by law (I believe it may be by considering such to be advertising; and radio stations are limited in the fraction of airtime which is advertising). This sort of payment is probably unproblematic from a legal and a moral standpoint, unless playlists are influenced by who is buying advertising (which would essentially be old-skool payola again).

Re:They only take it from known conspirators

[networkBoy]

"If consumers _really_ wanted unbiased reviews, then publications would do it the right way. Buy the product off the retailer's shelf and test. But that's expensive and no consumer is willing to pay for it."

You mean like consumer reports?

Re:Toms

[CmSpuD]

You can always just go to print.html on any of the Tom's Hardware articles, just add it to the end of the url on the first page.
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2007/06/04/wd_brings _250_gb_hdds_to_notebooks_uk/print.html

Re:They only take it from known conspirators

[Comboman]

The only specs that are based on subscriber surveys are reliablity/repair history. Everything else is based on laboratory testing. More info here. I suspect they are statistically sound, since you often see "insufficient responses" in the results for high-end items.

The biggest problem with their method (buying off the shelf rather than getting product from the manufacturer) is that by the time the testing is complete, you have a great deal of information on last year's model. Good for bargain hunters, but not for those who need to be on the bleeding edge (though I suppose those people don't really care what Consumer Reports says about the product they just have to have today).