I did college radio in the late 90s and these snakes would call, email and send promo material constantly. We had a program director who finally "bit". He was immediately overwhelmed with offers until everyone at the station noticed the playlists were mainly songs from artists signed to the same label. We were like "Dude, really??". One morning I went "off playlist" to honor a request and he flipped his shit and pulled me from the air for a week. Money corrupts...quick.
It was like "Here's the latest from Save Ferris, followed by Junkhouse, Hooverphonic, Peach Union, K's Choice" and every song was DOG ASS. This was college radio and we eventually revolted and started making fun of the truly terrible songs while on air, causing mayhem and merriment. I spent an entire shift playing "Consideration" by Reef over and over again because "I feel like our listeners aren't quite getting it" - Ahh, the roaring 90s. (Yes, we're talking SONY 550 here lol)
I found out through her cover of Black Sheep in Scott Pilgrim vs The World. She had a good voice tbh EDIT: I JUST GOT TO THAT PART IN THE VIDEO AND I DID NOT KNOW SHE STARTED THAT EARLY WOW.
Nobody talks about this today because it's still a thing. With iHeart Radio owning basically every station, they've gotten rid of Djs and replaced them with a few guys up in NY and LA. That way, they have full control of what gets played and what doesn't. They don't have to pay Djs anymore because there aren't many left, so they can just let loose.
thats what i found out a few years ago, the DJ for my local station (99.9 Virgin Radio) was Ryan Seacrest! i thought he had moved to Kelowna or something, but nope, just another LA based DJ...
Yeah, and Radio Disney? Was there ever a more blatant algorithmically robo-DJed remote-syndicated pile of fluffy doodle than that? Maybe it’s worse now. I wouldn’t know, because I stopped listening to radio the first time I was able to plug my iPod into my car stereo.
Although the local stations I listened to got bought by iheart they at the very least kept the local djs. Not that it makes much difference when they have to play the same stale shit as every other station. But still, some local guys still have jobs
Payola is so blatant in the world of spotify playlists. At this point I feel like I have to go out of my way to avoid the spotify made playlists and look for user created playlists. Individual users have the opportunity to become the new DJs spreading lesser known music, but the problem with that outlook is there is no way for an individual to earn money off that like a station could with ad time. I'm not saying spotify should let users monetize playlists, but there is an opportunity there to rethink the incentive structure of the whole industry.
Spotify in general pushes certain artists and their new releases _hard._ It is so blatant. It feels like popular music is decided by money now more than ever; even though Internet gave anyone and everyone a platform to show off their music and created some amazing new genres and subcultures, the big labels adapted fast and learned to harness it to their advantage. Now they can tout "indie" or "undiscovered" artists that are totally paid for, often the children of powerful people or otherwise manufactured groups and industry plants. At least something like K-pop is (mostly) transparent about how manufactured it all is, though it comes with its own host of problems. Remember when the industry was acting like illegally downloading music was going to _destroy music as we know it?_ And now streaming music is the norm. Sure, they get ad revenue now, but that was the point - consumers were demonstrating that they can't keep buying new albums (cause it's so costly) and would rather discover new music and often just download song by song. A lot of acts got big that way, and the artists themselves make pennies from the albums, the real money is in concerts and sharing your music freely gets those fans. Now the industry is on board but they still act like they were right all along - that it wasn't them taking too long to understand consumer habits and fighting inevitable chage and villifying a whole generation of potential customers. People don't mind paying if it's convenient and they get what they paid for - that's why Netflix worked, people could've downloaded those movies but it was easier to pay 7 bucks for a subscription. These days we discover music mostly because it's pushed on us, or through (dubious) algorithms. Your idea about the playlist curators is great. We should be entitled to know if a song was paid to be on a playlist or if there are industry connections at play. Truly independent playlist creators could be trendsetters. I let RUclips recommend me stuff, but I mostly rely on recommendations from my friends
I work at a place where we can choose a spotify playlist. I never use it otherwise. Somehow, no matter fucking what, morrissey and the smiths show up like 10 times a day without fail. Especially when youre putting on Vampire Weekend radio, theres definitely something fuckin weird with that
It will never be as big as it was I don't think, because very few people listen to terrestrial radio anymore. Everyone I know has a playlist they have curated on their devices and listen via Bluetooth in their car.
@TECTONICSMASH Yeah, but your choices of pre-made playlists is a whole lot more diverse than the over the air radio stations we had access to in the late 90s early 00s.
@@chesspiece81 They do, though. Radio factors heavily into Billboard's charting and the general public still turns it on in their cars. Labels continue to funnel goods and services into the industry for their artists to gain spins and traction.
I worked in the radio industry at the time. Regulations tightened. Then social media came along and consumers thought it was a free market; not realizing the labels now have massive unregulated platforms to leverage. Want to bump up someone on Spotify? Outsource to a phone farm in Asia. Remember when they tried to seed Lorde as “starting in her bedroom” via a secret tumblr? It’s ironically easier for them to do what they tried in the 90s now, and wayyyyy cheaper
Lots of people seemingly want this though. The industry alone didnt convince all these normie post internet to once again and again and again centralize all stats and money flow through 1 service. Soundcloud seemed to really be the push again with spotify, maybe its just zoomers not understanding.. They love to sign contracts without knowing what it means.
I am a volunteer presenter on a local radio station. I don't get paid for doing my show and we're certainly not big enough to be involved in payola schemes, but I remember having to sign something that says something along the lines of "I have not and will not accept payment or gifts, monetary or otherwise, for the playback of specific songs". I don't know if this is a thing other stations do, but it meant I knew a little bit about payola prior to watching this video. I really appreciate the consolidation of examples as I always assumed it was just cash and smaller bands. Wild stuff.
Completely honestly I don't think I've ever heard a Good Charlotte track. I've got their album Youth Authority on CD from an abandoned house and I will never listen to it because I read the lyrics and laughed too hard at how corny it is.
Another reason radio payola sucked: the airwaves are severely limited public resources (sold off to the wolves in the 90s), and before ubiquitous broadband that meant corporate labels were killing off any remaining chance for a listener to hear songs that got on the air due to merit. These days no one _has_ to listen to those stations for new music, but the airwaves are still a public good and badly need regulation to give them back to small, local orgs.
I think this was the "biggest" issue with payola. Someone paying to rig a Spotify playlist is NBD for most of us, because there are millions of alternatives. Radio frequencies are finite commodities, though, and especially before the days of 5G, still meant something to anyone more than about 20 feet from a desktop computer. They still kinda do today - TuneIn built itself on being the clearinghouse that let you listen to ALL the radio stations around the world. But there's something about having a radio at work, hearing that song that frankly kinda sucks, and then hearing it one hour later, and the only option being to turn to another radio station that's probably playing the same damn song. Especially since, as you pointed out, a decade before the consolidation of the industry was allowed to happen, so that instead of paying five guys $1000 to get your shitty artist covered, you could now pay one guy $2500 for the same coverage.
In Argentina they played it a little different: major labels got together and started their own radio station. "Los 40 Principales" (The Main 40). This works well for them in two ways: first, they get to promote whatever they want. Second, due to the station name and the lack of official charts in the country (I think), people get the impression that those 40 songs are actually the most popular tracks of the moment.
When I moved to a new city, I was like "cool, new place, new radio station!" The song lineup was EXACTLY the same as where I came from. I was saddened. I was tired of my last place's radio lineup, which was predictable down to around the time of the day.
That's due to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which ended the limitations on how many radio stations corporations could own. Sadly, that very law essentially killed off a lot of radio stations playing different types of music in the area. I remember in the early 1990's I could hear New Age and Easy Listening music on stations dedicated to that type of music.
I always just assumed this was how the music industry works, as it was pretty blatant for all my years following popular music, especially in the 2000s. It's just moved to different platforms in the 2020s like streaming and the radio stations you hear in retail and other commercial environments, and it's embraced label's back catalogues to the point that you see old songs in the charts.
I hate having missed out on worthwhile radio. Smaller local stations being able to play lesser known music they think is worthwhile, making for an incredibly diverse experience and giving you real leads into new genres and groups. Radio as a whole seems pointless now. I have several and don't use them. Its a black hole.
😂 I know what you mean. There's all kinds of stories about songs breaking on college radio -- like Radiohead only taking off because some stations in Israel started playing Creep. Seems like such a badass experience to have worked for a hip college station back in the day.
College radio can still be pretty good. I remember tuning into the local station a few years back around midnight and the incredibly stoned DJ just decided to play all of Hawkwind's Space Ritual.
@@Bandsplaining Protection (against criticism, blame and negative opinions) and loyalty (promotion of artists of their roster and laws/politicians who worked for the growth of their monopoly). It was a HUGE telecom company who also owns press, TV, Internet, music venues, radio and record labels.
@@Bandsplainingread about the situation with kurt cobain nearly losing his child due to an article about him and courtney love and being made to do happy family subsequent interviews afterwards. That was some shadey sht
Oh man, this video was a random algorithm pull for me but this is my SHIT. Not that I know a lot, but rather that this is exactly the kind of video essay I will mainline hardcore. Great content! Also fantastic editing and illustration.
I am 100% convinced that paying for radio play never ended and record labels are still doing it constantly. How else do you explain all these shitty songs on the radio?
radio has been dead a long time, pal. Satellite and terrestrial both. Payola's happening on streaming services now where labels are paying to have artists put on Spotify-curated playlists, various media (tik tok, web series, tv shows), etc. It's less effective these days as media consumption has become diffuse. Ironically, as tracking *who* is listening/watching and when they are doing so has become much, much more accurate, it's getting harder and harder to scale ensured consumption of your media by engaging in payola. There will never again be a band as big as the Beatles, not because there isn't music that is just as good, but because the slices of pie that comprise the industry become innumerable. A label might be able to dominate a particular sector or market, but any given sector or market is getting smaller.
Can you recall a time where songs are countlessly replayed on the radio without anyone liking it? Yes, it's happening right now and has been happening for well over a decade
They haven't even been hiding it for awhile either, I remember when I was riding the bus to school, the same station would play the exact same songs at the same time, but in our area, the time we were on the bus was during their morning show, so it wasn't like it was during a shift change.
man, your videos always were really informative and entertaining. but with the production on this one, you took the thing to whole nother level! much respect to you and partykaleta!
Any politician can have as many adult prostitutes as they want as long as they produce RESULTS at their work. Certain people didn’t like that he was blowing the whistle on their corruption so they tried to disgrace his name for doing something that they ALL do.
Reminds me of what the CIA tried to do with MLK Jr. Sex scandals should only be scandals if it's non consensual or relavent to their job. I don't give a shit about somebody cheating on their wife, at least not if I don't know them personally.
It was also early 2000s, I was a toddler then so I don't know, but were people less ok with prostitution than they are now? (Not that people are ok with it now, just less)
There’s dirt like that on almost every politician I’d imagine, they release if you don’t play ball. It’s called blackmail. What do people think Jeffrey Epstein was doing?
what sucks especially about the timing of this scandal is it was contemporaneous with the death of so many indie labels post-napster, so it's a double whammy on locking smaller artists out of potential visibility and revenue.
2018 when "bodak yellow" and "in my feelings" were the only songs playing on power 106 in los angeles. no joke. it was just those two songs on repeat with a different track thrown in every few plays
Ha, ha, ha. I remember being 17 years old in 2002, and "Harder to Breathe" became one of my favorite songs. I was very frustrated that the rock and pop stations in Atlanta never added it to their playlists. 🤷🏿♀️
From listening to Christian music as a teen, I immediately recognized Pillar. Also spotted Switchfoot in that list near the end. While I am in no way surprised, I laughed seeing that even the Christian labels (Pillar's Flicker Records. Switchfoot was signed to Sony at that time.) weren't pious enough to shy away from slimy business practices. Speaking of which, I would love to see a video on the Christian music business and labels. Some the shadiest practices came from Cristian labels. Bands who either signed to mainstream labels or left the Christian music industry entirely have spoken up about the issues they had with those labels. From racism to weird signing expectations. Some labels required a band to have God or Jesus talked about in every song. They couldn't just be clean or contain Christian morals and values, there had to be explicit on-the-nose Christianity and evangelism.
American Christianity is a cover for capitalism just like it was a cover for slavery years ago. Some things don’t change, and you should expect this behavior.
Pillar is one of those Christian metal bands that I tend to forget existed when I'm trying to pull up stuff here on RUclips. 😂 But seriously though, Switchfoot surprised me, but not for the reasons you may think. One of their members, Jerome Fontamillas, was also part of a little-known band called Fold Zandura. If you've never heard their stuff - which is likely, as I'll get into here - I highly recommend it. Switchfoot was all over the place; I remember hearing a few of their songs on The End here in Seattle not too long ago. Of course, they had quite the presence on Air1 and The Effect back in the day, too. But Fold Zandura? You were lucky if that one song of theirs from the Extreme Days soundtrack got played during your afternoon commute. I don't recall ever hearing any of their singles get any airtime whatsoever. Same with pretty much all of Jyro Xhan's other projects, including those he produced (The Echoing Green, Juggernautz, Mortal). Guess he didn't pay to play. 😒
@@enginerdyI really wish Christians would go back to making communes. Or at the very least go back to considering usury a sin and the act of buying something just to sell it to be akin to theft. Christians used to be some of the most anti-capitalist people on earth and now so many of them are owned by it. It's honestly sad.
Whoa, my old band used to play with Get Set Go. Mike TV from GSG would book weekly gigs at our favorite bar. They were always fun and Mike was always out front rocking out to every band.
Nice to see Good Charlotte's own label privately felt about them the same way I did. I am reminded of all those hair metal bands complaining about a lack of label support once grunge got popular and I wonder if Atlantic was like "Let's put some lipstick on this pig." about Seven Mary Three.
The great thing about these emails detailing that the radio stations not even following through, it confirms the fact that if there is one business scummier than the music industry, it’s the radio industry.
The whole entertainment industry can be a bit scummy, in my opinion. It's a problem that started to happen in the Western world once live entertainment started to move to larger concert halls and theatres early in the 19th Century. It may not be absurd that a lot of _payola_ money changed hands in order to get Beethoven's later symphonies performed in public.
In Chicago we had a rock station in the early 2000’s that played a Top 10 every night. Callers would call in and vote for their favorite songs. I participated in it myself from time to time. One night out of nowhere a new band shows up on the top 10 and takes the 1 spot. That band was Linkin Park. Payola.
Oh god, my world is corrupted, I wasn't a punk, I was PUNKED! The video is kind of like a "No duh sleazeball managers would do that, of course" But it also makes me think of the decent bands/artists I've liked over the years that totally coulda been huge, except they didn't have the money to buy the airtime. Depressing.
In November 2004, the song “Predictable” by Good Charlotte fell on the pop chart from #24 to #46 in a single week. It’s the biggest single week drop on record under the methodology of spins per week. Kind of makes sense now; I always thought of big , sudden drops on the chart (that are not caused by the emergence of a follow-up single) as a sign of a song being played out of obligation. This is kind of depressing, because almost every artist mentioned in this entire video is great, and some of my fondest memories of 2000’s involve the fact that Audioslaves, Franz Ferdinands, and 30 Seconds to Mars could still get onto the pop charts. Now that appears to be somewhat fraudulent. Although I guess there’s always going to be a little fraudulence with all the manipulation that takes place by these major labels to get songs on the charts.
@@crnkmnky I still consider Take me out a staple of mid 2000's radio. I have it cemented in my mind as it was one of the songs heavily used to market the PSP
Payola isn't technically illegal as long as it is acknowledged on air, which can be done fairly covertly, plus between the original payola and the 2004 events, it was still going on.
There's a great story about Limp Bizkit doing this to promote their first single. From Wikipedia: Interscope Records proposed to the band that the label pay $5,000 to guarantee that Portland radio station KUFO-FM play the song "Counterfeit" fifty times, preceded and concluded with an announcement that the air time was paid for by Interscope. The paid air time was criticized by the media, who saw it as "payola". The band's manager Jeff Kwatinetz later termed the plan as a "brilliant marketing move". Durst stated, "It worked, but it's not that cool of a thing."
I suspect you could devote a whole channel dedicated how bands and artist were broke commercially by pay to play. Your content is researched really thorough and cohesively btw, far more in depth that others who discuss similar music related topics.
@@bpark222 Thank you! I probably could, but I try to balance out how many "scandal" videos I make vs. cool, lesser-known bands. Topics like this are super fun to research and (I hope) entertaining to watch, but you don't walk away from it with new music. Unless you really liked Get Set Go, I suppose 😂
I personally think it's actually kind of less blatant because iHeart Media, Spotify and Apple Music can be accessed by anyone willing to pay a small amount of money per month. It wasn't like the 1950's, when _payola_ bribing had to ber really aggressive due to limitations on how many radio stations a corporation can own.
Do people forget that those same companies tried to make Radio a monthly subscription? Same people who made cable a paid subscription and the same people who want to monopolize the internet with "bundles" and "packages".
As an independent musician who has released his own stuff, the current state of the music industry is so much worse now. It's pay to play all the way down, from top to bottom. Either musicians themselves or their labels pay for listens on streaming services and SoundCloud, pay for follows, pay for influencers to 'review' and promote, pay for popular playlist creators to put your song in their playlists, and it just goes on and on. The music market is saturated and money is what gets you discovered. While surely a very small percent take off on TikTok naturally, a lot of the time, it's all paid for.
then you get the vaporwave scene, and theres basically no pay for play as far as i can tell. just people making and enjoying music. pop music is where the dogshit is
@@Inexpressable the issue is that the mainstream has no meritocracy, I'd assume vaporwave has very little pay to play because there's no pay to listen lmao. We are talking about why pop music is not good. No one cares about vaporwave beats to chill/study to. We all know it's dogshit you think anyone is just learning that from this video? Do you share your deep thoughts like this on every video?
I have to agree with you. I work at a performing rights organization and it seems like the best a creator can do is to skip the lines and hope for a direct licensing deal.
Wow,I love music, but never really listened to live radio stations that often. I was a cassette/CD and Comcast music channel guy at the time. I kind of thought that was how it worked in their industry. Thank you for educating me on this.
You can tell an industry has matured when it's complete existence is basically corruption from top to bottom. It's almost as if adding money to an equation distorts it's entire purpose. Entertaining people with musical performances and recordings? No, that's just a tool to make money and it's only value is economical. No artistic value, no intrinsic value, only what can be speculated and manufactured. People say I'm cynical, but I'm really just tired of it all.
Don't you love how every time a major corporation is caught with their pants down all they get is a slap on the wrist financially, learn nothing and proceed to find new and interesting ways to go right back to what they were doing?
One of the reasons why I gave up working in the industry. No I teach young people drums for the love of music, and for their own benefit… I make an effort to infuse them with the idea that the music is what’s important.. not getting a “deal” or making it. The whole industry is a disgusting cesspool that must be avoided if you want to keep sane and happy
TBF, the Pearl Jam thing, at least how you described it, doesn't sound like a payola at all. Which probably is why it failed - they didn't offer enough incentive for the stations to get I to it
Most of the deals didn't have an enforcement mechanism, except for the Adidas one (the other shoe is sent after X plays) and a few others. Radio station's incentive to follow through was the promise of more deals and more money in the future, or rather, the threat of a label no longer wanting to work with them. KROQ (in the Pearl Jam example) was perhaps the biggest rock station in the country at the time, so they probably felt more emboldened to do things on their own terms.
I had no idea about this. I was living in Japan at the time. The movies, TV shows, reality tv, and news that I missed still boggles my mind almost 20 years later.
I heard a story once in an article about this at the time about Jennifer Lopez. JLo had released a smash single. But the follow up was kind of a huge dud. Critics hated it, as it was formulaic and trying to be annoyingly hip but inauthentic. The listening public admitted they didn't like the song and skipped over it on the cd. Yet it kept getting hundreds of plays and no one could figure out why. No one likes it! Then the payola thing became public. Stations were playing it over and over again at three in the morning so the label could brag in the trade magazine ads for JLo that it got "this many spins at Hot 100 Kiss FM!" Manipulating a song into a hit even though it sucked and even her own fans didn't like it.. wow...
@@davehire1433 Yes! I think you're right! I always wondered what the gains were of doing this. It corrupted the industry, made the artist look bad when it was revealed, and felt like flogging a dead horse. If the song isn't great why try to make it a hit even if her own fans are lukewarm to it? It just kept other worthy new artists and bands off the charts. Even JLo can be allowed a dud now and then!
The same thing must be happening with Taylor Swift and the media in general. She is OK, her music is fine it comes on when I'm getting my hair done and I don't wanna throttle anyone but the amount of goddamn Taylor Swift articles I am being force fed in my social media feeds is bonkers. From my local news station I liked to get breaking news, and from all the major morning shows and the radio station I liked to hear about concerts and news on alternative bands. Also from the entertainment magazine I once subscribed to for news and reviews on all aspects of entertainment. Now it's Taylor Swift might have broken up, 2 minutes later why her relationship is stronger than ever. It's as bad if not worse than Kardashians now. Yeah I could unsubscribe but it shouldn't be on me. I still want to follow news in case something is happening that actually affects me. It's crazy. People that obsessed can follow her own social media everyone else is liking her less and less because of this.
Taylor Swift’s marketing team is certainly doing their job, but it’s a little ridiculous to suggest that just because you’re seeing a ton of headlines about the biggest artist in the world currently on the biggest tour in the world that she must be colluding with the media and committing crimes. You’re underestimating both how popular she is and how much non-Swifties like her music And there are plenty of news sources that aren’t reporting every little thing about Swift like you suggest. If you’re seeing a bunch of Taylor news that you don’t want to see… that sort of is on you? Even on mainstream aggregators like Google News I only see the occasional local article about her tour coming to their city, or a Rolling Stone article about the tour or the new Taylor’s Version album. I think you’re overselling how much this actually impacts you.
Part of that is because she's been actually having a lot of things going on lately. Something about re-recording all of her old songs because a shitty record company still owns the rights, releasing a new album of new songs, as well as going on a tour that's been pulling 72,000 person crowds at the same venue two nights in a row.
Where i work my coworkers are talking about and playing ts all the time, and i think she really IS just that popular, many people just have worst taste than youd expect. Plus the re-recording her masters saga gives her a cheap, easy, feel-good feminist “fight-the-man!” Spin that makes people feel like listening to her is subversive in a way. It’s like just listening to her is a feminist act, why so many people call you a misogynist for disliking her
It's "Attorneys General" ;) Anyway, this is the kind of bizarrely interesting but ultimately pointless story I like to see on youtube. Great presentation too!
Less than a minute in and the most surprising thing is probably going to be the “Paying to get stuff played on the radio is illegal” I think the biggest revelation here is that a lot of people rely on corporations to tell them what they should listen to. Holy shit, that list of band names is insane, it’s laughable how forgettable most of those are.
Around 2003 or 4, a radio station in Hartford played the new R Kelly/Jay-Z song back to back for AN HOUR STRAIGHT. I just assumed they were paid to do that; no other explanation possible
Pretty sure this has been the way it is since Casey Kasem's top 40 charts. There was only three radio stations when I was younger and all you had was classic country, rock music, and what was supposed to be modern "youth" music, and all three of them played the same 20 songs over and over again. Hell, I didn't even know genre of music existed until the dial up modem days when non-radio music started coming through the phone line.
When I was a kid, there was a period of probably a year where you could flip between 5-10 different channels and every single one of them would be playing Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Green Day. Like all simultaneously, with each station only 10-20 seconds ahead or behind each other in the song.
Given that they were an Interscope thing at the time, it's not a huge shocker. Per the settlement agreement, this was post-Fragile, AATCHB era where the label was still looking to get those Downward Spiral numbers happening, or at least save what they thought was a failure, that being The Fragile. Who knows what they did for With Teeth. With TR's generally adversarial relationship with record labels, a degree of plausible deniability is reasonable. I'm going to say this added to his aversion for the label, probably played into him telling the fans to steal his music, and severing ties in 2007.
@@drstewartyeah part of me thinks he wasn't even contacted, whilst Interscope allowed more freedom for Trent they still did shady shit under the table
Sorry Bandsplaining, you obviously spent a lot of time and effort creating this well-researched, entertaining video with original animation, but I just can't take any of it seriously. There's a huge, glaring, serious factual issue right at the beginning that completely invalidates everything that comes after. It's attorneys general, not attorney generals. /s
always wondered why something as fake and mediocre as Good Charlotte could get popular. Now I know. Which also explains why Good Charlotte would advertise PETA in the USA and Kentucky Fried Chicken in Australia at the same time.
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
None of that surprised me even a little bit...
1000th comment btw!
Here's to 1k more
@@Bandsplaining 1004 comments six months later. Only four comments in the past six months??? WTF is up with that?
@@rockets4kids Wow, that it is strange. But the video has only had 3.5k more views since then so I guess it makes sense. Nature of the algorithm 🤷
"Good Charlotte bribing radio stations with Playstation 2 games" the most 2000s sentence ever.
Bust A Groove!!
What’s the most 2023 sentence?
Vladimir Putin bans BARBIE movie
That's punk rock. Don't you DARE tell Good Charlotte they are not punk. DON'T DO IT!!!
@richard that’s right that was the great debate at the time 😂
I did college radio in the late 90s and these snakes would call, email and send promo material constantly. We had a program director who finally "bit". He was immediately overwhelmed with offers until everyone at the station noticed the playlists were mainly songs from artists signed to the same label. We were like "Dude, really??". One morning I went "off playlist" to honor a request and he flipped his shit and pulled me from the air for a week. Money corrupts...quick.
Right on about money. It ruins everything. Every time.
It was like "Here's the latest from Save Ferris, followed by Junkhouse, Hooverphonic, Peach Union, K's Choice" and every song was DOG ASS. This was college radio and we eventually revolted and started making fun of the truly terrible songs while on air, causing mayhem and merriment. I spent an entire shift playing "Consideration" by Reef over and over again because "I feel like our listeners aren't quite getting it" - Ahh, the roaring 90s. (Yes, we're talking SONY 550 here lol)
Which radio station?
My question is, what would the radio have been playing if they weren't bribed by the record labels??
@@katelynbrown98 the hundreds of great bands who weren’t getting any airplay! That’s who!
Can't believe this is how I found out Brie Larson had a music career
Yes, at first I thought I misheard the name....
I found out through her cover of Black Sheep in Scott Pilgrim vs The World. She had a good voice tbh
EDIT: I JUST GOT TO THAT PART IN THE VIDEO AND I DID NOT KNOW SHE STARTED THAT EARLY WOW.
She sucks, who cares?
@@bruh-gn5kc The crazy part is how good she actually is at it. I didn't expect much when looking back but God damn
Rickey Gervais was a pop star before he worked in TV, the band was called "Seona Dancing". Look 'em up their pretty good.
Nobody talks about this today because it's still a thing. With iHeart Radio owning basically every station, they've gotten rid of Djs and replaced them with a few guys up in NY and LA. That way, they have full control of what gets played and what doesn't. They don't have to pay Djs anymore because there aren't many left, so they can just let loose.
*So that’s why MOST RADIO* completely
F-KING SUCKS, nowadays…
thats what i found out a few years ago, the DJ for my local station (99.9 Virgin Radio) was Ryan Seacrest! i thought he had moved to Kelowna or something, but nope, just another LA based DJ...
Yeah, and Radio Disney? Was there ever a more blatant algorithmically robo-DJed remote-syndicated pile of fluffy doodle than that? Maybe it’s worse now. I wouldn’t know, because I stopped listening to radio the first time I was able to plug my iPod into my car stereo.
Although the local stations I listened to got bought by iheart they at the very least kept the local djs. Not that it makes much difference when they have to play the same stale shit as every other station. But still, some local guys still have jobs
They pay the indies too. Don't think its just the big corporations
Payola is so blatant in the world of spotify playlists. At this point I feel like I have to go out of my way to avoid the spotify made playlists and look for user created playlists. Individual users have the opportunity to become the new DJs spreading lesser known music, but the problem with that outlook is there is no way for an individual to earn money off that like a station could with ad time. I'm not saying spotify should let users monetize playlists, but there is an opportunity there to rethink the incentive structure of the whole industry.
yes i feel this never stopped
Spotify in general pushes certain artists and their new releases _hard._ It is so blatant. It feels like popular music is decided by money now more than ever; even though Internet gave anyone and everyone a platform to show off their music and created some amazing new genres and subcultures, the big labels adapted fast and learned to harness it to their advantage. Now they can tout "indie" or "undiscovered" artists that are totally paid for, often the children of powerful people or otherwise manufactured groups and industry plants. At least something like K-pop is (mostly) transparent about how manufactured it all is, though it comes with its own host of problems.
Remember when the industry was acting like illegally downloading music was going to _destroy music as we know it?_ And now streaming music is the norm. Sure, they get ad revenue now, but that was the point - consumers were demonstrating that they can't keep buying new albums (cause it's so costly) and would rather discover new music and often just download song by song. A lot of acts got big that way, and the artists themselves make pennies from the albums, the real money is in concerts and sharing your music freely gets those fans. Now the industry is on board but they still act like they were right all along - that it wasn't them taking too long to understand consumer habits and fighting inevitable chage and villifying a whole generation of potential customers. People don't mind paying if it's convenient and they get what they paid for - that's why Netflix worked, people could've downloaded those movies but it was easier to pay 7 bucks for a subscription.
These days we discover music mostly because it's pushed on us, or through (dubious) algorithms. Your idea about the playlist curators is great. We should be entitled to know if a song was paid to be on a playlist or if there are industry connections at play. Truly independent playlist creators could be trendsetters. I let RUclips recommend me stuff, but I mostly rely on recommendations from my friends
Independent playlisters definitely also do payola for big playlists.
I work at a place where we can choose a spotify playlist. I never use it otherwise. Somehow, no matter fucking what, morrissey and the smiths show up like 10 times a day without fail. Especially when youre putting on Vampire Weekend radio, theres definitely something fuckin weird with that
@@MetalMarauder how do you know? please elaborate.
Payola will never end, no matter how many times it gets exposed. Even without money, they give "gifts" to bypass the law.
It will never be as big as it was I don't think, because very few people listen to terrestrial radio anymore. Everyone I know has a playlist they have curated on their devices and listen via Bluetooth in their car.
@@chesspiece81 Yep, good thing the people who listen to only what's popular on pre-made playlists dont exist anymore right haha
@TECTONICSMASH Yeah, but your choices of pre-made playlists is a whole lot more diverse than the over the air radio stations we had access to in the late 90s early 00s.
@@chesspiece81 They do, though. Radio factors heavily into Billboard's charting and the general public still turns it on in their cars. Labels continue to funnel goods and services into the industry for their artists to gain spins and traction.
Same with pharmaceuticals they've convinced everyone they need. But people can't even fathom that either.
I worked in the radio industry at the time. Regulations tightened. Then social media came along and consumers thought it was a free market; not realizing the labels now have massive unregulated platforms to leverage. Want to bump up someone on Spotify? Outsource to a phone farm in Asia. Remember when they tried to seed Lorde as “starting in her bedroom” via a secret tumblr? It’s ironically easier for them to do what they tried in the 90s now, and wayyyyy cheaper
This is a very interesting comment. You’re right on.
I know people that do this. It's only 10 tablets, but they have been playing over and over for a few years now.
Industry plants are all over the place.
Lots of people seemingly want this though. The industry alone didnt convince all these normie post internet to once again and again and again centralize all stats and money flow through 1 service. Soundcloud seemed to really be the push again with spotify, maybe its just zoomers not understanding.. They love to sign contracts without knowing what it means.
no wonder Lorde fell off. wouldn't be surprised if Dua Ligma was the same.
I am a volunteer presenter on a local radio station. I don't get paid for doing my show and we're certainly not big enough to be involved in payola schemes, but I remember having to sign something that says something along the lines of "I have not and will not accept payment or gifts, monetary or otherwise, for the playback of specific songs". I don't know if this is a thing other stations do, but it meant I knew a little bit about payola prior to watching this video. I really appreciate the consolidation of examples as I always assumed it was just cash and smaller bands. Wild stuff.
That "Dance Monkey" song finally makes sense. Rich daddy. Thank you for giving me closure!
The idea that Gwen Stefani’s solo career needed payola to thrive is bananas. B A N A N A S.
I remember seeing the song clear a dancefloor when it came out
That old lady's shelf life is over anyway.
At least she had No Doubt back then before the scandals of her solo career.
shit is bananas, B A N A S (YEAH!)
Meh, I only ever liked her work with No Doubt and Sublime
Noticed Lostprophets on that long list. I don't think any amount of payola will get them back on the airwaves.......
Dude,this was 20yrs ago
This explains why I CONSTANTLY heard "Don't Know Why" by Norah Jones when I was a kid...God that song drove me nuts
she sang it to Elmo twice
Ironically the title was also the answer the DJs gave for why they kept playing it. Hated that f*cking song so damn much.
She won Grammy's that year! No shade to her, but who tf decided that lol I also hated that song, still do
to be honest its not the worst
While I don’t remember this scandal ever happening, I do remember not being about to walk 5 feet without hearing a Good Charlotte song.
True, but I legit liked a majority of these songs they "forced" on us, so. *shrug*
Completely honestly I don't think I've ever heard a Good Charlotte track. I've got their album Youth Authority on CD from an abandoned house and I will never listen to it because I read the lyrics and laughed too hard at how corny it is.
I swear there was a period where if you bought a video game they'd be on the soundtrack, the PS2 game bribe is cosmic level irony.
i've never heard one.
It was most definitely the PS2 games lmao.
Another reason radio payola sucked: the airwaves are severely limited public resources (sold off to the wolves in the 90s), and before ubiquitous broadband that meant corporate labels were killing off any remaining chance for a listener to hear songs that got on the air due to merit.
These days no one _has_ to listen to those stations for new music, but the airwaves are still a public good and badly need regulation to give them back to small, local orgs.
Support and listen to College public radio as much as possible.
I think this was the "biggest" issue with payola. Someone paying to rig a Spotify playlist is NBD for most of us, because there are millions of alternatives. Radio frequencies are finite commodities, though, and especially before the days of 5G, still meant something to anyone more than about 20 feet from a desktop computer. They still kinda do today - TuneIn built itself on being the clearinghouse that let you listen to ALL the radio stations around the world. But there's something about having a radio at work, hearing that song that frankly kinda sucks, and then hearing it one hour later, and the only option being to turn to another radio station that's probably playing the same damn song.
Especially since, as you pointed out, a decade before the consolidation of the industry was allowed to happen, so that instead of paying five guys $1000 to get your shitty artist covered, you could now pay one guy $2500 for the same coverage.
I can imagine Murdoc Niccals trying to bribe stations in person, even if he's a cartoon. It's perfectly in-character for him.
Super impressed with the production value on this video. Your stuff keeps getting better!
In Argentina they played it a little different: major labels got together and started their own radio station. "Los 40 Principales" (The Main 40). This works well for them in two ways: first, they get to promote whatever they want. Second, due to the station name and the lack of official charts in the country (I think), people get the impression that those 40 songs are actually the most popular tracks of the moment.
What if the American Top 40 is the same 🤯
When I moved to a new city, I was like "cool, new place, new radio station!" The song lineup was EXACTLY the same as where I came from. I was saddened. I was tired of my last place's radio lineup, which was predictable down to around the time of the day.
That's due to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which ended the limitations on how many radio stations corporations could own. Sadly, that very law essentially killed off a lot of radio stations playing different types of music in the area. I remember in the early 1990's I could hear New Age and Easy Listening music on stations dedicated to that type of music.
I always just assumed this was how the music industry works, as it was pretty blatant for all my years following popular music, especially in the 2000s. It's just moved to different platforms in the 2020s like streaming and the radio stations you hear in retail and other commercial environments, and it's embraced label's back catalogues to the point that you see old songs in the charts.
I hate having missed out on worthwhile radio. Smaller local stations being able to play lesser known music they think is worthwhile, making for an incredibly diverse experience and giving you real leads into new genres and groups. Radio as a whole seems pointless now. I have several and don't use them. Its a black hole.
😂 I know what you mean. There's all kinds of stories about songs breaking on college radio -- like Radiohead only taking off because some stations in Israel started playing Creep. Seems like such a badass experience to have worked for a hip college station back in the day.
College radio and local radio are still alive and still good.
@@debnlinda I think the difference is that they are not the kind of gatekeepers and hitmakers they used to be
College radio can still be pretty good. I remember tuning into the local station a few years back around midnight and the incredibly stoned DJ just decided to play all of Hawkwind's Space Ritual.
today radio is fully ads atp, sometimes I try just to see what one and it’s like 2 songs and 10 minutes of ads, it’s unfortunately so unlistenable
That's also how journalism works. I sent a lot of those emails in my first job.
What were you guys paying for exactly? Interviews, exclusive stories?
@@Bandsplaining Protection (against criticism, blame and negative opinions) and loyalty (promotion of artists of their roster and laws/politicians who worked for the growth of their monopoly).
It was a HUGE telecom company who also owns press, TV, Internet, music venues, radio and record labels.
@@Symphonicrockfrandropping gems 💎 up in here
@@Symphonicrockfranlemme guess, Clear Channel 😂😂😂
@@Bandsplainingread about the situation with kurt cobain nearly losing his child due to an article about him and courtney love and being made to do happy family subsequent interviews afterwards. That was some shadey sht
Oh man, this video was a random algorithm pull for me but this is my SHIT. Not that I know a lot, but rather that this is exactly the kind of video essay I will mainline hardcore. Great content! Also fantastic editing and illustration.
I am 100% convinced that paying for radio play never ended and record labels are still doing it constantly. How else do you explain all these shitty songs on the radio?
radio has been dead a long time, pal. Satellite and terrestrial both. Payola's happening on streaming services now where labels are paying to have artists put on Spotify-curated playlists, various media (tik tok, web series, tv shows), etc. It's less effective these days as media consumption has become diffuse. Ironically, as tracking *who* is listening/watching and when they are doing so has become much, much more accurate, it's getting harder and harder to scale ensured consumption of your media by engaging in payola. There will never again be a band as big as the Beatles, not because there isn't music that is just as good, but because the slices of pie that comprise the industry become innumerable. A label might be able to dominate a particular sector or market, but any given sector or market is getting smaller.
I love your pfp
RUclips Music does this too and it's super annoying
They buy bots to view/ stream now. This puts them ahead in the algorithm, so it's basically paying for plays.
Yup. Dumping millions into the entertainment industry so their nepobabies can have easy jobs with ghostwritten 4 chord hits.
Can you recall a time where songs are countlessly replayed on the radio without anyone liking it? Yes, it's happening right now and has been happening for well over a decade
They haven't even been hiding it for awhile either, I remember when I was riding the bus to school, the same station would play the exact same songs at the same time, but in our area, the time we were on the bus was during their morning show, so it wasn't like it was during a shift change.
Longer than a decade
They haven’t been playing anything I like on the radio for the past 2 decades lmao
man, your videos always were really informative and entertaining. but with the production on this one, you took the thing to whole nother level! much respect to you and partykaleta!
Best music channel on youtube, hands down.
I love when this channel uploads new stuff
Any politician can have as many adult prostitutes as they want as long as they produce RESULTS at their work. Certain people didn’t like that he was blowing the whistle on their corruption so they tried to disgrace his name for doing something that they ALL do.
Reminds me of what the CIA tried to do with MLK Jr. Sex scandals should only be scandals if it's non consensual or relavent to their job. I don't give a shit about somebody cheating on their wife, at least not if I don't know them personally.
It was also early 2000s, I was a toddler then so I don't know, but were people less ok with prostitution than they are now? (Not that people are ok with it now, just less)
Eliot Spitzer could shoot a man on fifth avenue in broad daylight and his followers would still support him. He should run for President.
There’s dirt like that on almost every politician I’d imagine, they release if you don’t play ball. It’s called blackmail. What do people think Jeffrey Epstein was doing?
@@mlalbaitero Yes.
Nice animations adds a lot
it's scary how much money music labels can burn on bullshit
Can't afford to pay artists fairly though
what sucks especially about the timing of this scandal is it was contemporaneous with the death of so many indie labels post-napster, so it's a double whammy on locking smaller artists out of potential visibility and revenue.
Love the animations in the video, as well as your voiceover. Everything looks super slick and professional!
2018 when "bodak yellow" and "in my feelings" were the only songs playing on power 106 in los angeles. no joke. it was just those two songs on repeat with a different track thrown in every few plays
In My Feelings was overplayed in San Antonio too. It played on the shuttle bus at the same time, on the same station, every morning.
"why nobody talks about this scandal today"
Me: *maniacal laughter*
Payola never died, they just found ways around the legal issues.
Facts
Payolas did die, though. They haven't had a hit since Eyes Of A Stranger.
@@ashblossomandjoyoussprung.9917Do you live under a rock?
I really like the animation style and production in the new videos. Keep it up with the great job!
Music isn't an 'industry' but entertainment is, and that sums up the core of the problem.
amazing video, stunning animation. thank you!!
"Can you recall a time that a song was played constantly on the radio, and yet, no one seemed to actually like it?"
Me: Yeah, any Maroon 5 song :-|
Hey now, don’t knock Maroon 5, they’re a big hit in markets like Poughkeepsie, NY, Wahoo, Nebraska, and Hoboken, NJ /s
Suddenly, that brief stint during '95 where Gangster's Paradise was played on a continuous loop for 72 hours on all major stations makes sense... 🤔
Ha, ha, ha. I remember being 17 years old in 2002, and "Harder to Breathe" became one of my favorite songs. I was very frustrated that the rock and pop stations in Atlanta never added it to their playlists. 🤷🏿♀️
To this day "This Love" is one of those irritating songs I cannot stand because of how overplayed it was where I lived back in the 00's.
@@deslacooda Listen to the Pantera version.
From listening to Christian music as a teen, I immediately recognized Pillar. Also spotted Switchfoot in that list near the end. While I am in no way surprised, I laughed seeing that even the Christian labels (Pillar's Flicker Records. Switchfoot was signed to Sony at that time.) weren't pious enough to shy away from slimy business practices.
Speaking of which, I would love to see a video on the Christian music business and labels. Some the shadiest practices came from Cristian labels. Bands who either signed to mainstream labels or left the Christian music industry entirely have spoken up about the issues they had with those labels. From racism to weird signing expectations. Some labels required a band to have God or Jesus talked about in every song. They couldn't just be clean or contain Christian morals and values, there had to be explicit on-the-nose Christianity and evangelism.
Yeah, Christian labels are even worse than regular labels because they are more controlling of the sound and lyrical content of their artists
American Christianity is a cover for capitalism just like it was a cover for slavery years ago. Some things don’t change, and you should expect this behavior.
Pillar is one of those Christian metal bands that I tend to forget existed when I'm trying to pull up stuff here on RUclips. 😂
But seriously though, Switchfoot surprised me, but not for the reasons you may think. One of their members, Jerome Fontamillas, was also part of a little-known band called Fold Zandura. If you've never heard their stuff - which is likely, as I'll get into here - I highly recommend it. Switchfoot was all over the place; I remember hearing a few of their songs on The End here in Seattle not too long ago. Of course, they had quite the presence on Air1 and The Effect back in the day, too. But Fold Zandura? You were lucky if that one song of theirs from the Extreme Days soundtrack got played during your afternoon commute. I don't recall ever hearing any of their singles get any airtime whatsoever. Same with pretty much all of Jyro Xhan's other projects, including those he produced (The Echoing Green, Juggernautz, Mortal).
Guess he didn't pay to play. 😒
@@enginerdynnumunnumunnunnnnuunnu
@@enginerdyI really wish Christians would go back to making communes. Or at the very least go back to considering usury a sin and the act of buying something just to sell it to be akin to theft. Christians used to be some of the most anti-capitalist people on earth and now so many of them are owned by it. It's honestly sad.
Whoa, my old band used to play with Get Set Go. Mike TV from GSG would book weekly gigs at our favorite bar. They were always fun and Mike was always out front rocking out to every band.
Nice to see Good Charlotte's own label privately felt about them the same way I did. I am reminded of all those hair metal bands complaining about a lack of label support once grunge got popular and I wonder if Atlantic was like "Let's put some lipstick on this pig." about Seven Mary Three.
they're really not that bad by the way. they're nice guys in person and I like their music and seeing them in concert.
@@NoOneReallySpecial Joel dated a minor when he was 25. They are not good people
Production has gone up! Love your videos. Probably my favourite on RUclips.
Thank you!
The great thing about these emails detailing that the radio stations not even following through, it confirms the fact that if there is one business scummier than the music industry, it’s the radio industry.
The whole entertainment industry can be a bit scummy, in my opinion. It's a problem that started to happen in the Western world once live entertainment started to move to larger concert halls and theatres early in the 19th Century. It may not be absurd that a lot of _payola_ money changed hands in order to get Beethoven's later symphonies performed in public.
God this video is so underrated??? incredible presentation and so articulate!! great job!! :D
In Chicago we had a rock station in the early 2000’s that played a Top 10 every night. Callers would call in and vote for their favorite songs.
I participated in it myself from time to time.
One night out of nowhere a new band shows up on the top 10 and takes the 1 spot. That band was Linkin Park.
Payola.
That’s a shame because Linkin Park could have absolutely made a natural progression up the charts without bribery.
@@Ckoz2829 Wrong. Big bands had to do this because EVERY BIG ACT was doing it. If they didn't pay, they would haver had much much less airplay.
@@alephestudios
Oh, I guess that makes sense.
Ask anybody in radio about the iHeartRadio stimulus package. This still goes on today.
Oh god, my world is corrupted, I wasn't a punk, I was PUNKED!
The video is kind of like a "No duh sleazeball managers would do that, of course" But it also makes me think of the decent bands/artists I've liked over the years that totally coulda been huge, except they didn't have the money to buy the airtime. Depressing.
In November 2004, the song “Predictable” by Good Charlotte fell on the pop chart from #24 to #46 in a single week. It’s the biggest single week drop on record under the methodology of spins per week. Kind of makes sense now; I always thought of big , sudden drops on the chart (that are not caused by the emergence of a follow-up single) as a sign of a song being played out of obligation.
This is kind of depressing, because almost every artist mentioned in this entire video is great, and some of my fondest memories of 2000’s involve the fact that Audioslaves, Franz Ferdinands, and 30 Seconds to Mars could still get onto the pop charts. Now that appears to be somewhat fraudulent. Although I guess there’s always going to be a little fraudulence with all the manipulation that takes place by these major labels to get songs on the charts.
Right. Franz Ferdinand became the poster-child of the 2005 Payola scandal, but "Take Me Out" was one of the greatest pop songs of 2004.
@@crnkmnky I still consider Take me out a staple of mid 2000's radio. I have it cemented in my mind as it was one of the songs heavily used to market the PSP
Some of these bands are probably unaware but Good Charlotte was definitely involved with their payola
@@crnkmnkyThe whole album is great
@HattieJosh why do you say that?
This was a fascinating story and so well produced. Just the kind of thing I was looking for. You, sir, have gained a new subscriber.
You can tell nobody at the record companies talked to Legal. Otherwise they would have known to do all this over the phone instead of by email.
Payola isn't technically illegal as long as it is acknowledged on air, which can be done fairly covertly, plus between the original payola and the 2004 events, it was still going on.
There's a great story about Limp Bizkit doing this to promote their first single. From Wikipedia:
Interscope Records proposed to the band that the label pay $5,000 to guarantee that Portland radio station KUFO-FM play the song "Counterfeit" fifty times, preceded and concluded with an announcement that the air time was paid for by Interscope. The paid air time was criticized by the media, who saw it as "payola". The band's manager Jeff Kwatinetz later termed the plan as a "brilliant marketing move". Durst stated, "It worked, but it's not that cool of a thing."
I suspect you could devote a whole channel dedicated how bands and artist were broke commercially by pay to play. Your content is researched really thorough and cohesively btw, far more in depth that others who discuss similar music related topics.
@@bpark222 Thank you! I probably could, but I try to balance out how many "scandal" videos I make vs. cool, lesser-known bands. Topics like this are super fun to research and (I hope) entertaining to watch, but you don't walk away from it with new music. Unless you really liked Get Set Go, I suppose 😂
the animation elevates your content so much!!!
Yay! New Bandsplaining video!
Awesome graphics my guy! Great doco on this fascinating music history nugget.
Welcome to the next Bandsplaining level
I knew no one actually liked Dave Matthews Band, but it's nice to have official confirmation
This still happens on the radio to this day. Artists have to perform or do work for iHeartRadio to get the chance at a spin. It's disgusting.
I personally think it's actually kind of less blatant because iHeart Media, Spotify and Apple Music can be accessed by anyone willing to pay a small amount of money per month. It wasn't like the 1950's, when _payola_ bribing had to ber really aggressive due to limitations on how many radio stations a corporation can own.
@@Sacto1654 it's all about the scale.
I love your narrative voice. You really bring out the crooks in these record labels as you imitate them.
Do people forget that those same companies tried to make Radio a monthly subscription? Same people who made cable a paid subscription and the same people who want to monopolize the internet with "bundles" and "packages".
As an independent musician who has released his own stuff, the current state of the music industry is so much worse now.
It's pay to play all the way down, from top to bottom. Either musicians themselves or their labels pay for listens on streaming services and SoundCloud, pay for follows, pay for influencers to 'review' and promote, pay for popular playlist creators to put your song in their playlists, and it just goes on and on.
The music market is saturated and money is what gets you discovered. While surely a very small percent take off on TikTok naturally, a lot of the time, it's all paid for.
And thus…the rich kids get famous
then you get the vaporwave scene, and theres basically no pay for play as far as i can tell. just people making and enjoying music.
pop music is where the dogshit is
@@Inexpressable the issue is that the mainstream has no meritocracy, I'd assume vaporwave has very little pay to play because there's no pay to listen lmao. We are talking about why pop music is not good. No one cares about vaporwave beats to chill/study to. We all know it's dogshit you think anyone is just learning that from this video? Do you share your deep thoughts like this on every video?
I have to agree with you. I work at a performing rights organization and it seems like the best a creator can do is to skip the lines and hope for a direct licensing deal.
Well we had a few years without a rave scene, but it's starting to get better. Don't resort to pop tactics for fox music
On one hand, you couldn't bribe me to make people listen to Good Charlotte's third album
On the other hand, who would need a bribe to play Audioslave?
TRUE
People who don't play anything they are not paid to play. Most huge radio stations operated that way.
Wow,I love music, but never really listened to live radio stations that often. I was a cassette/CD and Comcast music channel guy at the time. I kind of thought that was how it worked in their industry. Thank you for educating me on this.
You can tell an industry has matured when it's complete existence is basically corruption from top to bottom. It's almost as if adding money to an equation distorts it's entire purpose. Entertaining people with musical performances and recordings? No, that's just a tool to make money and it's only value is economical. No artistic value, no intrinsic value, only what can be speculated and manufactured.
People say I'm cynical, but I'm really just tired of it all.
This is the first I've heard about it. Fascinating video.
Don't you love how every time a major corporation is caught with their pants down all they get is a slap on the wrist financially, learn nothing and proceed to find new and interesting ways to go right back to what they were doing?
One of the reasons why I gave up working in the industry. No I teach young people drums for the love of music, and for their own benefit… I make an effort to infuse them with the idea that the music is what’s important.. not getting a “deal” or making it. The whole industry is a disgusting cesspool that must be avoided if you want to keep sane and happy
This explains how Good Charlotte had a music career at all.
What the heck did I just stumble upon? This video looks great!
Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars. Everywhere from 2003-2006. Couldn't escape its grasp. Hated it.
Yep that piece of shit song was everywhere 😂
"I swear it's not an ad; now let me try to sell you this useless crap."
Omg. Who would WRITE OUT "don't let them get caught" how hard would it have been for them to at least maintain plausible deniability
Those emails sound like they were written by somebody in the middle of a coke rage lol
@@MeeYeeWeeWeethey most likely were half the time
Man, you dropped a banger
TBF, the Pearl Jam thing, at least how you described it, doesn't sound like a payola at all. Which probably is why it failed - they didn't offer enough incentive for the stations to get I to it
Most of the deals didn't have an enforcement mechanism, except for the Adidas one (the other shoe is sent after X plays) and a few others. Radio station's incentive to follow through was the promise of more deals and more money in the future, or rather, the threat of a label no longer wanting to work with them. KROQ (in the Pearl Jam example) was perhaps the biggest rock station in the country at the time, so they probably felt more emboldened to do things on their own terms.
finding out that good charlotte had an insane payola scheme behind them makes middle school/high school age me who hated them feel quite vindicated.
Can you imagine anyone today taking the time to call a radio station and request a song, sit by the radio and hope it comes on, maybe, eventually?
People still do that, especially college radio
iHeartRadio could never 😆
I had no idea about this. I was living in Japan at the time. The movies, TV shows, reality tv, and news that I missed still boggles my mind almost 20 years later.
I heard a story once in an article about this at the time about Jennifer Lopez. JLo had released a smash single. But the follow up was kind of a huge dud. Critics hated it, as it was formulaic and trying to be annoyingly hip but inauthentic. The listening public admitted they didn't like the song and skipped over it on the cd. Yet it kept getting hundreds of plays and no one could figure out why. No one likes it! Then the payola thing became public. Stations were playing it over and over again at three in the morning so the label could brag in the trade magazine ads for JLo that it got "this many spins at Hot 100 Kiss FM!" Manipulating a song into a hit even though it sucked and even her own fans didn't like it.. wow...
I expected to see that song in the video. I think it was called “Get Right”.
@@davehire1433 Yes! I think you're right! I always wondered what the gains were of doing this. It corrupted the industry, made the artist look bad when it was revealed, and felt like flogging a dead horse. If the song isn't great why try to make it a hit even if her own fans are lukewarm to it? It just kept other worthy new artists and bands off the charts. Even JLo can be allowed a dud now and then!
The same thing must be happening with Taylor Swift and the media in general. She is OK, her music is fine it comes on when I'm getting my hair done and I don't wanna throttle anyone but the amount of goddamn Taylor Swift articles I am being force fed in my social media feeds is bonkers. From my local news station I liked to get breaking news, and from all the major morning shows and the radio station I liked to hear about concerts and news on alternative bands. Also from the entertainment magazine I once subscribed to for news and reviews on all aspects of entertainment. Now it's Taylor Swift might have broken up, 2 minutes later why her relationship is stronger than ever. It's as bad if not worse than Kardashians now. Yeah I could unsubscribe but it shouldn't be on me. I still want to follow news in case something is happening that actually affects me. It's crazy. People that obsessed can follow her own social media everyone else is liking her less and less because of this.
respectfully, think you’re just old and don’t know how popular she is
Taylor Swift’s marketing team is certainly doing their job, but it’s a little ridiculous to suggest that just because you’re seeing a ton of headlines about the biggest artist in the world currently on the biggest tour in the world that she must be colluding with the media and committing crimes. You’re underestimating both how popular she is and how much non-Swifties like her music
And there are plenty of news sources that aren’t reporting every little thing about Swift like you suggest. If you’re seeing a bunch of Taylor news that you don’t want to see… that sort of is on you? Even on mainstream aggregators like Google News I only see the occasional local article about her tour coming to their city, or a Rolling Stone article about the tour or the new Taylor’s Version album. I think you’re overselling how much this actually impacts you.
Part of that is because she's been actually having a lot of things going on lately. Something about re-recording all of her old songs because a shitty record company still owns the rights, releasing a new album of new songs, as well as going on a tour that's been pulling 72,000 person crowds at the same venue two nights in a row.
back here in the Philippines it's all K-Slop now.
Where i work my coworkers are talking about and playing ts all the time, and i think she really IS just that popular, many people just have worst taste than youd expect. Plus the re-recording her masters saga gives her a cheap, easy, feel-good feminist “fight-the-man!” Spin that makes people feel like listening to her is subversive in a way. It’s like just listening to her is a feminist act, why so many people call you a misogynist for disliking her
Babe wake up, new Bandsplaining
Makes me need to listen to Baha Men!!
My local radio station got a letter writing campaign and petition to never play again the song: What I am - Edie Brickell & New Bohemians.
Was that game 7 of the 2003 ALCS? When mentioning "Yankees Tickets"?
Edit: sure was. Posada's game tying double. Classic.
Good time to revisit this.....
This reminded me, I did actually win a Good Charlotte CD for calling in on a radio contest. 😂
I loved the animation!
To be fair, Murdoc did make a deal with Satan to make Gorillaz popular, so perhaps we can blame the devil for that one
It's "Attorneys General" ;)
Anyway, this is the kind of bizarrely interesting but ultimately pointless story I like to see on youtube. Great presentation too!
This... actually explains why in today's day and age I get entire music videos as a commercial on a YT video.
it's all the shitty music that gets ads too. smh.
100 gecs never needed no fucking ads
3:38 technically, it's "Attorneys General", not "Attorney Generals"
Less than a minute in and the most surprising thing is probably going to be the “Paying to get stuff played on the radio is illegal”
I think the biggest revelation here is that a lot of people rely on corporations to tell them what they should listen to.
Holy shit, that list of band names is insane, it’s laughable how forgettable most of those are.
Around 2003 or 4, a radio station in Hartford played the new R Kelly/Jay-Z song back to back for AN HOUR STRAIGHT. I just assumed they were paid to do that; no other explanation possible
Shame on Crayola for allowing this
Pretty sure this has been the way it is since Casey Kasem's top 40 charts. There was only three radio stations when I was younger and all you had was classic country, rock music, and what was supposed to be modern "youth" music, and all three of them played the same 20 songs over and over again. Hell, I didn't even know genre of music existed until the dial up modem days when non-radio music started coming through the phone line.
As if the music industry still isn't insanely corrupt.
When I was a kid, there was a period of probably a year where you could flip between 5-10 different channels and every single one of them would be playing Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Green Day. Like all simultaneously, with each station only 10-20 seconds ahead or behind each other in the song.
still happens, just now with playlisting.
nice to see you didnt even finish the video before you decided to comment
@@lolax121 I did and it was great!
Feels kind of ironic that I got an ad that was just a whole music video while watching this
Nine Inch Nails is the last band I expected to be involved in payola, the more you know.
Given that they were an Interscope thing at the time, it's not a huge shocker. Per the settlement agreement, this was post-Fragile, AATCHB era where the label was still looking to get those Downward Spiral numbers happening, or at least save what they thought was a failure, that being The Fragile. Who knows what they did for With Teeth. With TR's generally adversarial relationship with record labels, a degree of plausible deniability is reasonable. I'm going to say this added to his aversion for the label, probably played into him telling the fans to steal his music, and severing ties in 2007.
@@drstewartyeah part of me thinks he wasn't even contacted, whilst Interscope allowed more freedom for Trent they still did shady shit under the table
Sorry Bandsplaining, you obviously spent a lot of time and effort creating this well-researched, entertaining video with original animation, but I just can't take any of it seriously. There's a huge, glaring, serious factual issue right at the beginning that completely invalidates everything that comes after.
It's attorneys general, not attorney generals.
/s
😂 learn something new every day
I'll bet you don't go to many second parties.
It’s not a factual issue. It’s merely an oversight. But your 29 fake likes, well….
always wondered why something as fake and mediocre as Good Charlotte could get popular. Now I know. Which also explains why Good Charlotte would advertise PETA in the USA and Kentucky Fried Chicken in Australia at the same time.
Those two would be a pretty extreme giveaway, for me, I didn't know they had, yikes
@@dsxa918Would be a lot easier to spot now with ads being easily available online.