Payola

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) treats payola as a violation of the Sponsorship Identification Rules, which requires any broadcast of paid material to include a disclosure.

[1][2] The term payola, coined by entertainment magazine Variety in 1938,[3] is a combination of "pay" and "-ola", the latter of which is a suffix of product names common in the early 20th century, such as Pianola, Victrola, Amberola, Mazola, Crayola, Rock-Ola, Shinola, or brands such as the radio equipment manufacturer Motorola.

Only general and vague statements were offered; that determining top hits was based on "readings of radio requests, sheet music sales, dance hall favorites and jukebox tabulations".

[21] In 1976, inner-city urban soul DJ Frankie Crocker was indicted in a payola scandal, causing him to leave New York radio, where his influence was greatest.

Following the creation of music sharing websites in the late 1990s, the power of independent promoters declined and labels returned to dealing with stations directly.

[21] In 2002, investigations by the office of then-New York District Attorney Eliot Spitzer uncovered evidence that executives at Sony BMG music labels had made deals with several large commercial radio chains.

[30] Due to increased legal scrutiny, some larger radio companies (including industry giant Clear Channel) now refuse to have any contact with independent promoters.

[31] Clear Channel Radio, through iHeartRadio, launched a program called On the Verge that required the stations to play a given song at least 150 times in order to give a new artist exposure.

Brand managers at the top of the Clear Channel chain, after listening to hundreds of songs and filtering them down to about five or six favorites from various formats, send those selections to program directors across the country.

Songs that benefited with the exposure were Iggy Azalea's "Fancy", Tinashe's "2 On", Anthony Lewis' "Candy Rain", and Jhené Aiko's "The Worst".

Tom Poleman, president of national programming platforms for the company, stated that the acts selected are based solely on the quality of their music and not on label pressure.[32][33][relevant?]

In this practice, unknown "new artists" will suddenly appear on multiple formats and be aggressively promoted by producers of dubious origin, then disappear from the music scene or change their stage name.

In that context, Fager stated: Payola is no longer the local DJ receiving a couple dollars for airplay; it is now an organized corporate crime that supports the lack of balanced content and demeaning imagery with no consequences.

[40]In 1960, Stan Freberg did a parody on the Payola Scandal, by calling it "Old Payola Roll Blues", a two-sided single, where the promoter gets an ordinary teenager, named Clyde Ankle, to record a song, for Obscurity Records, entitled "High School OO OO", and then tries to offer the song to a jazz radio station with phony deals that the disc jockey just won't buy it.

[citation needed] In an installment of Mathnet from PBS's Square One Television, the detectives George Frankly and Pat Tuesday investigated a case of suspected payola by forming a fictitious group called "The Googols" and creating their own song titled "Without Math".

Zach Quillen, manager of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, discussed how "they paid the alliance a flat monthly fee to help promote the album.