Music Activists Call for Payola Crackdown
As the FCC prepares its pay-to-play probe, fueled by N.Y. Attorney Gen. Eliot Spitzer’s recent payola investigation, music industry experts Tues. welcomed any reforms to level the playing field for lesser known artists to get their songs on the radio. Musicians and activists cited frustrations and personal stories about the major record labels’ dominance over the airwaves at the Future of Music Coalition summit in D.C.
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The fact is that “a hit is a hit” and although optimists would like to think that all great music has the opportunity to rise to the top, small labels and independent acts face institutional barriers and don’t have deep pockets, said Don Rose, acting pres. of the American Assn. of Independent Music. The game for labels -- large and small -- is to get their artists’ songs on the air, but “if the game is expensive, then it limits independent participation,” he said: “We've been troubled as a sector for a long time over how the game has developed.”
To add insult to injury, payola is inextricably tied to media consolidation, Rose said. Historically, payola involved catering to local radio programmers, but in the age of the “mega-conglomerates,” the tactic now means pandering to corporate executives whose companies own numerous stations, he alleged. “Pay-for-play has become an institutional process rather than an individual one,” he said: “We don’t have the opportunity to influence local programming.”
One similarity between old and new payola regimes exists, argued Media Access Project Pres. Andy Schwartzman: “We're in the midst of a highly deregulatory Republican administration that has signaled to the radio industry that ‘we're going to look the other way.'” He said both instances involve “greedy people out breaking the law at the expense of independent artists who expect more from publicly owned spectrum operators.” While there’s no law against pay-for-play, there are rules governing disclosure, Schwartzman said. “What’s wrong is a failure to disclose. A marketplace works better when all sides have complete information,” he said.
Pressure to play the payola game helped catapult rock band Semisonic into the mainstream spotlight. It also contributed to the group’s eventual demise, drummer Jacob Slichter said. When Semisonic’s first single was released, he kept a close eye on expenses incurred during a cross-country promotional blitz urged by their record label. When the album subsequently flopped, “we were in the hole for about a half million bucks,” he said.
Their next album included the hit single “Closing Time.” Keeping that song on the air long enough to make an impression on listeners cost the band about $700,000, which was about as much as their take on the entire platinum-selling album. “It was a very mixed bag,” Slichter said. In the end, Semisonic was more than $2 million in debt and the majority of the cost was getting their songs on the radio, he said.
It’s clear that something has to give, Rose said. Big labels aren’t happy with the current system because it’s “damned expensive” and it’s a hefty line item in their annual budgets, he said. Radio conglomerates are dissatisfied because their stations are losing listeners and mainstream radio is looking over its shoulder at the growing popularity of satellite and online radio, Rose said: “I don’t think it’s serving anybody anymore. It’s just busted.”
Comr. Adelstein, who spoke at the conference on Sun., lauded Spitzer’s investigation and said the FCC will pursue a pay-to-play probe that relies heavily on those documents. Last month, Chmn. Martin called for a review of the Spitzer’s Sony BMG case by the Enforcement Bureau (CD Aug 12 p12, Aug 9 p8).