payola

Importance of Non-Commercial Radio in a Payola Broadcast Culture
by Sakura Saunders

The last 80 years of technological innovation have not fared well for the jobbing musician. While high quality music has become increasingly accessible for audiences at anytime and any place, the mechanisms put in place to protect the livelihoods of musicians have made these artists the target of exploitation and has encouraged industry-wide corruption. It is important to understand the process by which this systematic corruption amongst the gatekeepers of music arose in order to highlight the relevance of and need for non-commercial media.

Music royalties for radio were first introduced in 1922, when ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers) threatened to prosecute radio for playing ASCAP-licensed songs. Previously, these fees were levied against music performers, who would pay songwriters in order to perform their songs for money. With radio and records now on the music scene, publishers were afraid that people wouldn’t pay to hear music performed as often; they wanted their piece of the broadcasting pie.

To counter the power of ASCAP, the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) formed in 1923. By 1939, the NAB had formed its own copyright firm, BMI (Broadcast Music Inc.), with the intention of weakening ASCAP's monopoly on the copyright industry. Later, in 1941, ASCAP demanded a 70 percent increase in royalties and called a strike until its needs were met. The strike lasted ten months, and while ASCAP did end up winning higher royalties, the time that ASCAP artists spent off of the air ended up popularizing the musicians that were aligned with BMI, which were usually less established artists, many of color, who were signed to independent labels. This was the beginning of the popularization of black music--a path that eventually led to rock'n'roll. But, the commodification of music had other consequences.

Payola, or receiving payment for playing a record on the air, has existed as long as people stood to profit from it, and even became institutionalized in the late 70's in the form of independent promoters.

The first time government came down on payola was in 1959, with the conviction of Alan Freed (well, he was not convicted until 1962, after years of court.) Alan Freed was the first famous rock'n'roll DJ; in fact his show, "The Rock'n'Roll Party", was actually the first instance of that genre's title. A congressional investigation into payola was then instigated by the people of ASCAP since they were suffering due to the popularization of BMI artists (many of whom were considered rock’n’roll). As BMI was formed by broadcasters, many of them had a financial interest in the music that they were playing. However, even though the practice was widespread, Alan Freed became the posterboy of payola. After being conflicted, fined, and thrown in jail for six months, he even was tried for tax evasion. He eventually drank himself to death in January of 1965.

Despite this unsavory ending, payola persisted throughout the 70's. It did not get institutionalized, however, until after the consolidation of media into six multinational corporations. These corporations realized that if there was a price on airplay, this would actually be to their advantage, adding to their stability in an inherently unstable industry. However, they also realized that they could not bribe the DJ's themselves because that would be too risky for a big business. So, they hired independent "promoters" to do their bidding. These independent promoters would be the middlemen between the labels and the radio stations, using their promotional fees to bribe DJ’s. Eventually, these “promoters” acquired so much power that even already established artists (i.e. Pink Floyd) could not get airplay except through them. A problem arose wherein these radio stations only had a few slots available for new songs. The labels had to compete with each other to get the few promoters to put their stuff into the rotation. The competition had two consequences. First, it drove up the price of getting music added so high that indie labels had no chance of competing. Second, the major labels competing against each other drove the prices up so high that the cost of promotion would amount to up to 30 percent of the overall profit that the major record labels would make.

The practice of paying for play has occurred ever since and has recently been met with an even newer form of payola. After Clear Channel acquired their 1,200+ radio stations, they decided that they would be damned if they were going to allow these independent promoters to make that much money off of their playlists. So, they patted themselves on their backs, calling the end of payola and announcing that they were no longer going to use these indie promoters. Instead, Clear Channel now coerces bands to do free concerts at Clear Channel venues, or risk getting black-listed. Also, despite their pledge to end payola, several DJ’s at their stations (see freepress.net, Payola, Big Radio Sells Out) are now being investigated for accepting gifts from major record labels like BMG and Warner Music Group.

The competition for profits between the likes of independent promoters, corrupt DJs, and greedy records labels, in an increasingly uniform market has led to the widespread exploitation of musicians. While industry profits have soared, musicians are losing out. The limited access to large audiences, unless through bad record contracts, is a symptom of radio consolidation, playlist centralization, and plain old corruption. These profit-oriented gatekeepers prove irrelevant in promoting a diversity of music, and (especially since many record labels require artists to cede many of their publishing rights to the record label) ineffective in transferring any benefit to the actual artist. Meanwhile, this highlights the need for a non-commercially motivated broadcast outlet for the promotion of media, putting the power in the hands of the artists and the fans. Community alternative radio is a cheap and efficient way to reach large audiences, while building networks advantageous to independent musicians.