Pay-for-Play Music Industry

As an industry, the radio media outlet has always been against the government having control over regulations; however they are the ones begging for help from the government in order to save themselves from destruction. The radio industry giant, Clear Channel, is in negotiations with Tri State Promotions looking to receive an exclusive agreement to make Tri State’s promoters high priority over any other company. The deal if passed would allow all Tri State indies to be the first ones allowed to approach Clear Channel radio stations with new singles.
This deal is important to the industry because of the loop-hole found by record labels which allows them to drop large amounts of money in the pockets of indies who in turn pay radio stations to play new singles. The key to this loop-hole is the independent promoter (Tri State), without using an indie as the middle man record labels wouldn’t be able to pay radio stations for air time without it being shown on the books. Thanks to the payola law it’s against the law for record labels to bribe for airplay of their artists.
To give you an idea of the kind of money that is being spent within this loop-hole I will use this formula: new songs X bribe per song X number of radio stations.
So if there are 150 new songs a year and indies are paid $1000 per song and get 100 radio stations to play their songs then the indies make a possible $15 million a year. Another point to make clear is that record labels will offer indies anywhere for a couple hundred to a couple thousand per song which in turn isn’t all spent bribing the radio stations.
Forms of payment to the radio stations are also important to notice. Indies don’t use cash or checks to pay for airtime, instead they pay in form of coupons, cruise gift certificates and VISA gift cards. Radio stations do use these products in their contests and giveaways, but they don’t use them all, and the ones that aren’t used are held as kickbacks. For example, there was a radio station that was giving several coupons for free cruise trips; they only gave away two and kept the rest for themselves. Now the most popular form of payment is in the form of VISA gift cards because it can be used anywhere and there is no paper trail.
This entire situation brings up the question of morals and ethical behavior. No one is coming upfront asking for help because “everyone is doing it”, but it is hurting the industry by restricting the freedom of artists to get their music heard. Small record labels struggle to get their music played just on the simple fact that they can’t afford it. This is where the government needs to step in and help the industry out because shortly in time there won’t be any small independent labels left and the music industry will belong to the label giants. If you love your music and the artists’ individuality like I do, then help this situation get the attention that it deserves and voice your opinion on the problems at hand before small labels are locked out the market completely.