Payola
Payola -  The paying of cash or gifts in exchange for airplay.

"Payola" is a contraction of the words "pay" and"Victrola" (LP record player), and entered the English language via the record business. The first court case involving payola was in 1960. On May 9, Alan Freed was indicted for accepting $2,500 which he claimed was a token of gratitude and did not affect airplay. He paid a small fine and was released. His career faltered and in 1965 he drank himself to death.

Before Alan Freed's indictment, payola was not illegal, however, but commercial bribery was. After the trial, the anti-payola statute was passed under which payola became a misdemeanor, penalty by up to $10,000 in fines and one year in prison.



By the mid- fifties the independent record companies had broken the  majors stranglehold on airplay and BMI licensed songs dominated the charts.

In the wake of the quiz show scandals ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) urged House Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Oren Harris to look into the recording industry's practice of payola.

ASCAP, with its head in the sand, believed  BMI licensed songs were hits only because of payola. With the breakdown in morals, ASCAP believed these records were played so often by greedy deejays causing them to become imprinted on unsuspecting teenagers.   ASCAP who had always looked at rock and  roll as a passing fad. With these hearings they were trying to ensure that would be the case.

Prior to the beginning of the hearings the FTC filed complaints against a number of record manufacturers and distributors. Those that wished to escape prosecution agreed to a 30 days Consent Order. Many of the companies found themselves back where they had started and folded.

"The cancer of payola cannot be pinned on rock and roll." ....Billboard Magazine. Billboard stated payola was rampant during vaudeville of the 20s, and the big band era of the 1930s and 1940s

The committee decided to look into deejays who took gifts from record companies in return for playing their records on their shows. Fearing the worse the record companies began stepping forward and announcing that they had given money to specific deejays. Soon twenty five deejays and program directors were caught in the scandal. Among the more popular ones were Joe Niagara (WIBG,  Philadelphia), Tom Clay (WJBK, Detroit), Murray "The K" Kaufman (WINS, New York) and Stan Richards (WILD, Boston) The probe quickly focused in on the two top deejays in the country, Dick Clark and Alan Freed.   Freed's broadcast alliances quickly deserted  him. In late November, Freed was fired from both ABC-radio and WNEW-TV.

Clark, with more to lose, quickly gave up all his musical interests when ordered to do so by ABC-TV.  When asked to sign a statement denying involvement Freed refuse and was promptly fired from his job with WINS.

When Clark appeared to testify he brought Bernard Goldsmith a statistician. Goldsmith told the committee that Clark had a 27% interest in records played in the past 28 months and those records had a 23% popularity rating. The committee was stunned as they wondered what came first the chicken or the egg.

Clark's testimony began with telling the committee he had given up all outside interests connected with the recording industry. He also said the only reason he had gotten involved with those businesses were for the tax advantages. Clark admitted a $125 investment in Jamie Records returned a profit of $11,900 and of the 163 songs he had rights to143 were given to him.

When questioned about Jamie records it was discovered that Jamie paid out $15,000 in payola, but Clark denied ever accepting any. The committee clearly didn't believe Clark, but he received just a slap on the wrist. In fact, committee chairman Oren Harris called Clark "a fine young man."

Freed who refused to deny involvement wasn't so lucky. Though he would only receive a small fine and six months suspended sentence his career was in tatters. Freed would die penniless, a bitter broken man, Jan 20, 1965 in Palm Springs, California.. He was forty three.
i copied the above...from http://www.history-of-rock.com/payola.htm

i was wondering how dick made it.because he sucks,he has no appeal to me.he ain't the hipest cat around,he's just owned..its a shame.
the more i read about rock and roll the more i believe it DID inspire the decadance of not just americas but the worlds youth.
no wonder the ruskies outlawed rock and roll....

pete townsend wrote a rockopera called life house in which a rock band took over the government by creating a revolution thru the playing of their music....it was going to be made into a movie because the first 2 did well.but i guess it fizzled.
musicians are soldiers of a sort.fighting to save your rights....or are they decaying our fibres??

Ya know they just brought out the fact the George w. payed journalist to write glowing reviews of his idiotic ideas, why cant we fire him and ruin his career. Oh well, wishful thinking

I think payola is going on today full blown in the music business making Alan Freed look like an angel by comparison without any controversy because most of the crap from these crappy artists of today wouldn't be played at all on radio realistically speaking from Nelly to Ashlee Simpson.

Did Townsend ever finish 'Life House'? I havent read up on that in awhile. If so, I wonder if its worth a listen.

no...some of the songs were released on whos next.teenage waste land was to be the theme song....i guess he will never finish it..

Payola's today are in the form of PR... You pay them to get you on the playlists!!

Quoted from pc31

musicians are soldiers of a sort.fighting to save your rights....or are they decaying our fibres??

No - they're taking our money and sleeping with our sisters.

Like Epstein buying enough copies of Love Me Do for his NEMS stores to ensure a chart placing.
Remember when Blondie's comeback single Maria got to number 1? Fine song, but I thought "who's buying this?" Fifteen year olds? Don't think so. And I don't know many people over 30 (surely their fanbase) who dash out and buy singles.
But maybe I'm just being cinical

It is cynical Kev..They have now stopped that from hapening over here by making the charts proportionate to region whereas back in the day, you could make a record enter the charts by buying all from the same store. Technically nowadays, it would'nt be the song that has sold the most records, that gets to No.1 if I am not mistaken. It would have to be the most sold around the UK.

Now the cons come in disguises like discounts, formats etc.

Remember when Posh Spice was offering a kiss if you bought her single?
For that I'd expect at least a blow job

Heheheeh!

not only freed was targeted but gene vincent as well.
the moral majority has big vicious teeth....
on another note chuck berry,who wrote original material,was coerced to put alan freeds name on a few singles.like he helped write them.
i thought freed was scape goated but if he used his staus to bully chuck into adding his name so alan would play his music..then i may have to reevaluate my freed obsession...i maybe barking up the wrong freed....

They have a HUGE display of Alan Freed and his story at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Come to think of it, he was from Cleveland, and it is not totally out of bounds to say that rock and roll was born in Cleveland!  (OK, it's a stretch, but they make that claim, supporting it with the fact that Alan Freed organized the first rock and roll concerts ever in the history of the UNIVERSE!!! there, so they do have a point to a degree).

Anyway, from what I read, the guy was just your basic white geek from the midwest in the 50's until he heard black rock and roll music. Then he went totally insane, basically giving up his whole life just to promote it. NOT what one might call the most responsible life decision in the world. He did a fantastic job though, radio shows and concert host/organizer. I reallly wonder how different the course of rock music would have been without him. It's tragic how he died, but I hope he's smiling that he's getting his due right there on the 3rd floor of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, right next to the Les Paul exhibit. IMHO, he paid his dues and deserves it.