Payola - History

History

"Payola, in one form or another, is as old as the music business." In earlier eras there was not much public scrutiny of the reasons songs became hits. The ad agencies which labored for NBC radio & TV show Your Hit Parade for 20 years refused to reveal the specific methods that were used to determine top hits. Attempts to create a code to stop payola were met with lukewarm appreciation by publishers.

Prosecution for payola in the 1950s was in part a reaction of the traditional music establishment against newcomers. Hit radio was a threat to the wages of song-pluggers. Radio hits also threatened old revenue streams; for example, by the middle of the 1940s, three-quarters of the records produced in the USA went into jukeboxes.

Alan Freed, a disc jockey and early supporter of rock and roll (and also widely credited for actually coining the term), had his career and reputation greatly harmed by a payola scandal. Dick Clark's early career was nearly derailed by a payola scandal, but he avoided trouble by selling his stake in a record company and cooperating with authorities. Attempts were made to link all payola with rock and roll music.

The amount of money involved is largely unpublished; however, one deejay, Phil Lind of WAIT in Chicago disclosed in Congressional hearings that he had taken $22,000 to play a record.

Partially out of payola concerns, a very large majority of DJs are cut out of the song-picking decisions and are instead told, in the form of a playlist, what to play and when, by their superiors (who may include music directors, program directors, general managers, and even owners), and more recently, through automation of operations.