Pay For Play


June 9, 2001


BOB GARFIELD: Welcome back to On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Behind the constant countdown of top 40 hits, the generic play lists aired from coast to coast is a tawdry tale of money, music and middlemen. There are three main players. First there are the record labels who pay independent promoters known as "indies" to make sure their artists get on the air. Second, the indies -- the middlemen who pay for exclusive access to radio station programmers. And third, the radio stations who play the songs the indies promote. Recently however one record label decided to take a slice out of the middleman's take. Eric Boehlert is a senior writer for Salon.com and an expert on pay for play. So Eric, one more time -- every time a new song is played, the indie gets paid by the record company.

ERIC BOEHLERT: Right. Every time a new song is played on a r-- pop, rock, urban, country station in this country, someone's getting paid, and the person getting paid is the indie, and the person paying them--

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BROOKE GLADSTONE: What kind of money--

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ERIC BOEHLERT: --is the label. So in a small market it might be 500 dollars. In a medium size market it might be a thousand dollars.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Per play; per song.

ERIC BOEHLERT: Per song. Major markets up to 5 or 6,000 dollars.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: How much money does a successful independent promoter make?

ERIC BOEHLERT: You know you could just have a small shop in -- you know you have a fax in an office and a secretary and you have ten stations that you deal with -- pop stations -- you could easily make a million dollars a year.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: For doing virtually nothing.

ERIC BOEHLERT:Yeah. There's almost no salesmanship on the indie part. It's all about toll collecting. If an indie claims a station exclusively, they don't care what the station plays! Because they're going to get paid regardless.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Basically what they do is they write a check to each of the stations--

ERIC BOEHLERT: Right.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:-- that they have exclusive access to and then they send out invoices to the record companies. Why do either of these parties need this middleman? He seems to do nothing but cost money!

ERIC BOEHLERT: For a record company to pay a radio station, the radio station would have to announce it every time it played the Mariah Carey song, they would have to say that was brought to you by Columbia Records, and no one wants to do that. So they hire the indie; the indie takes the money and turns around and give it to a station in a lump sum of a promotional budget. But every song comes with a price tag. Every week the labels issue their priorities --their new singles -- and they will say right on the list how much each song is worth. 800 dollars, a thousand dollars, 15 hundred dollars -- and everyone sort of understands--

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BROOKE GLADSTONE: So they're gonna l--

ERIC BOEHLERT: -- what the relationship means. It means you have to add enough songs for the indie to make money; you have to add enough songs that are expensive enough for an indie to make money and then everyone's happy.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:So the indie basically intimidates the general manager or the owner by suggesting that if they don't play the songs that reap the best benefit for the indie, he may not come around next year with a nice lump sum up front. How does he intimidate the record companies?

ERIC BOEHLERT: If for some reason he doesn't get paid -- it's very rare -- the fear is that the next band two weeks from now, that will be kept off the air because the indie never got paid.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So it's a kind of strangle hold.

ERIC BOEHLERT:It is, but you know the labels pay this money willingly. I mean they could have ended it 10, 20, 30 years ago. They have tried haphazardly a few times, but there's always someone who's willing to pay. You know they can't all get together and say we're not going to pay indies cause that's sort of anti-trust. You can't-- meet with your competitors and say we're going to stop doing business with these people.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: There was an attempt at a boycott at some point.

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ERIC BOEHLERT:There was in, in the early '80s - in '81 they tried, and all of a sudden their superstar acts weren't getting on the radio, and that fizzled, because the artists put an end to it!

BROOKE GLADSTONE: What is the impact here on somebody who likes to listen to the radio?

ERIC BOEHLERT:Well the impact is: if you're not on the major label, you can't possibly get on the radio, because if a programmer falls in love with a song and plays it just cause he loves it, he's going to hear from his indie and the indie's going to tell him why are you playing songs that no one need-- is even pitching you on? Because I'm getting paid by labels to get songs on the radio. Here is this little local band you're playing, and there's no indie, and that makes me look bad! It doesn't last long. They're off the air in a couple of weeks.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So the industry has been awash with money.

ERIC BOEHLERT: Yeah.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: It's been boom times. But not so much now, and so then along comes--

ERIC BOEHLERT: Mm-hm.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: --Boodilicious [sp?] -- and that's why we're doing this interview.

ERIC BOEHLERT:It's the latest example of the record companies trying to get a hold of this whole chaotic system. Columbia Records is promoting-- New Destiny's Child's single Boodilicious. They've had 6 number ones in a row. They're probably the hottest pop R&B act in the country right now, and Columbia told indies that we're only going to pay for ads at stations in the top 50 markets, and it seems like a minor attempt, but it's been a long time since the label's tried to send the indies any sort of message at all.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And how have the indies reacted?

ERIC BOEHLERT:The ones I talked to who actually were outside the top 50 markets, they actually thought it was a good idea. I mean they're not going to get paid cause their stations don't qualify, but they agree that the system needs what they call "the correction."

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Does the fact that one enormous record label has given some indies a slap on the wrist for what is seen as kind of uniform and systematic extortion -- is this going to have any effect on what the person who likes to listen to music on the radio is likely to hear?

ERIC BOEHLERT: Well it'll depend. I mean if other labels follow, they have to all do it at once. Because if they don't, everything is just sort of washed away.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And if the other labels do--

ERIC BOEHLERT: Yes.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: -- let's imagine a pie in the sky scenario--

ERIC BOEHLERT: Yes.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:-- and they've gradually cut off the spigot to these independent promoters who go into some--line of work where they're actually-- doing something--

ERIC BOEHLERT: Uh-huh?

BROOKE GLADSTONE: -- have the record labels then shot themselves in the foot? They've lost their exclusive paid-for access to-- station time and this leaves more room perhaps for the little independent labels to squeeze in?

ERIC BOEHLERT: Well there's always that theory that you know the labels bemoan the fact that it's so expensive, but in private their suggestion is they don't mind that it's that expensive, because it limits the playing field! And instead of 5 major record companies duking it out for the play list, now you have 200 labels duking it out.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So how do the little guys get heard? The Internet?

ERIC BOEHLERT: Oh, I guess. It's not commercial radio. There's no way.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Eric Boehlert, thank you very much!

ERIC BOEHLERT: Thanks.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Eric Beohlert is a senior writer for Salon.com.