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)
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 🤷🏿♀️
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?
WAIT WAIT WAITTT- this just brought back a memory I'd almost forgotten! If anyone here had Sirius XX radio in 2019, do you remember how EVERY SINGLE pop station was playing that one collaboration Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber had?? I literally avoided the stations-and heck, Spotify radio stations- for half a year because of it. And you cannot convince me that it was not a form of payola fueling this, I mean sure, I listen to songs I enjoy on loop sometimes, but who wants to hear that same song OVER AND OVER AGAIN FOR ALMOST A YEAR.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"NY Attorney General in 2005 was forced to leave office in shame over a sex scandal" Ahh such an innocent time when politicians could be forced out of office over petty sex crimes with consenting adults
@@eric_clover Yes. Every presidential impeachment that has been handed out has been rightful. Those charges are scrutinized more than any other political consequence. The point is Nixon saw the shame of even being possibly impeached (he wasn't, but he knew the process to do it was starting) as enough to resign while certain other presidents simply did not care.
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.
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
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.
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.
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".
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.
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
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?
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!
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.
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.
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
To be fair, the only reason we care is because this specific way of doing it happens to be illegal. If you have enough money, You can force your way into anything
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.
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
I gotta think people don’t talk about this anymore partly because this sort of scammy business practice is completely normal now. I mean the labels don’t need payola now because they were allowed to just buy the main streaming service outright.
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.
I knew labels pushed their own artists that's why you heard some random on the radio that was never heard of weeks later but didn't knew it was this blatant, and at times somewhat evil cartoon like 😅
Sorry, but your history is off. He went after big business as NY Attorney General, a role he left in 2006 to be NY Governor. Only after he became governor did the scandal come out, reported in 2008 by NYT, a paper that was not against his actions as NY AG. If the point of the scandal was to stop his actions as NY AG, it came too late for that.
this still happens to this day..Swiftie and Bey Bey can record a fart and it will get billions of streams and views. who do you think owns all the radio stations, music venues, and invests in Spotifys and all the onine publications ?
@@sawtooth808all majority stock owned by Black Rock along with damn near everything else plus there is another channel called barely sociable who ripped the damn Band-Aid right off. The rabbit hole on this one goes very very deep. The video is called something like the music industries darkest secret and to me it basically reveals a faction war
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.
That has to be why Marcy Playground's "Sex & Candy" was in constant rotation for over 20years on the only local Rock station here. I've never met anyone who actually liked that song but it played at least once an hour during work hours every. single. day.
I always thought back then that Green Day was indulging in something like this. I knew they were really popular at the time, but it was freaking CONSTANT on every radio station. I'd be hearing "Holiday" on one channel and change it to another, just to hear more "Holiday." Or American Idiot. Or Boulevard. It was every five minutes. So I just stuck with my tiny sandisk mp3 player a lot of the time
I'm convinced Kings of Leon paid too,they were everywhere for years, i would spend 8 hours at work and hear their horrible songs every hour for years until they completely disappeared,never heard anything from them since
And all the payola benefits costs will have been taken out of the royalty payments (with interest) to the band - as the labels never pay for anything themselves.
I still respect that 311 has been consistently touring pretty much since they started, but I guess that can't entirely be related to a drive for music making
Honestly like blockbuster I’m glad popular radio like this has pretty much died. You said alot that these big bands needed those promotion teams. I don’t think they did that’s just how much imaginary power stations held back then.
Having grown up in this era, I just always assumed that this was the case and nothing controversial. There was so much flash-in-pan filler and good, but riskier music was always a blip with few exceptions. Even if it was a big act someone had to grease palms for it to make it on the radio. The industry didn't like or care about music, all they ever cared about was the One Simple Trick that made them money.
![Cody Johnson - I'm Gonna Love You (with Carrie Underwood) [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/yy9PuYMU29g/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!
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.
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.
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.
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
That "Dance Monkey" song finally makes sense. Rich daddy. Thank you for giving me closure!
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.
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.
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
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 🤯
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.
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.
"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 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.
it's scary how much money music labels can burn on bullshit
Can't afford to pay artists fairly though
"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.
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.
Super impressed with the production value on this video. Your stuff keeps getting better!
WAIT WAIT WAITTT- this just brought back a memory I'd almost forgotten! If anyone here had Sirius XX radio in 2019, do you remember how EVERY SINGLE pop station was playing that one collaboration Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber had?? I literally avoided the stations-and heck, Spotify radio stations- for half a year because of it.
And you cannot convince me that it was not a form of payola fueling this, I mean sure, I listen to songs I enjoy on loop sometimes, but who wants to hear that same song
OVER AND OVER AGAIN FOR ALMOST A YEAR.
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.
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.
This explains how Good Charlotte had a music career at all.
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.
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.
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.
"NY Attorney General in 2005 was forced to leave office in shame over a sex scandal"
Ahh such an innocent time when politicians could be forced out of office over petty sex crimes with consenting adults
Nixon resigned as president over the possibility of being impeached, shame and accountability in politics is long gone.
You can be labeled as a sexual predator by the court and still run for president these days
Well, when they're specifically targeted for a smear campaign by big business interests...
@@Toastybeesyes but he was being rightfully impeached. He ordered a break in lol
@@eric_clover Yes. Every presidential impeachment that has been handed out has been rightful. Those charges are scrutinized more than any other political consequence. The point is Nixon saw the shame of even being possibly impeached (he wasn't, but he knew the process to do it was starting) as enough to resign while certain other presidents simply did not care.
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.
@@oldladytrexarms Joel dated a minor when he was 25. They are not good people
Nice animations adds a lot
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?
Babe wake up, new Bandsplaining
Makes me need to listen to Baha Men!!
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
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.
Best music channel on youtube, hands down.
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".
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.
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
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?
I love when this channel uploads new stuff
I knew no one actually liked Dave Matthews Band, but it's nice to have official confirmation
To be fair, Murdoc did make a deal with Satan to make Gorillaz popular, so perhaps we can blame the devil for that one
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!
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
@@moyo6606they most likely were half the time
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.
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.
Shame on Crayola for allowing this
"It was a simpler time. When having a turntable in a metal band just made sense."
That sounds like a much more complicated time
Nu-metal was built different..
Welcome to the next Bandsplaining level
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
Love the animations in the video, as well as your voiceover. Everything looks super slick and professional!
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 really like the animation style and production in the new videos. Keep it up with the great job!
amazing video, stunning animation. thank you!!
My local radio station got a letter writing campaign and petition to never play again the song: What I am - Edie Brickell & New Bohemians.
Yay! New Bandsplaining video!
This reminded me, I did actually win a Good Charlotte CD for calling in on a radio contest. 😂
To be fair, the only reason we care is because this specific way of doing it happens to be illegal. If you have enough money, You can force your way into anything
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.
God this video is so underrated??? incredible presentation and so articulate!! great job!! :D
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….
Feels kind of ironic that I got an ad that was just a whole music video while watching this
Was that game 7 of the 2003 ALCS? When mentioning "Yankees Tickets"?
Edit: sure was. Posada's game tying double. Classic.
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.
I gotta think people don’t talk about this anymore partly because this sort of scammy business practice is completely normal now. I mean the labels don’t need payola now because they were allowed to just buy the main streaming service outright.
What the heck did I just stumble upon? This video looks great!
This is why I listen to KEXP. Always finding new music there.
Based King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard comment
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.
I knew labels pushed their own artists that's why you heard some random on the radio that was never heard of weeks later but didn't knew it was this blatant, and at times somewhat evil cartoon like 😅
Surely the guy going after big business was the only politician seeing prostitutes. No conspiracy to down him at all
Sorry, but your history is off. He went after big business as NY Attorney General, a role he left in 2006 to be NY Governor. Only after he became governor did the scandal come out, reported in 2008 by NYT, a paper that was not against his actions as NY AG. If the point of the scandal was to stop his actions as NY AG, it came too late for that.
@@calmbbaer as NY governor was he going after big business?
this still happens to this day..Swiftie and Bey Bey can record a fart and it will get billions of streams and views. who do you think owns all the radio stations, music venues, and invests in Spotifys and all the onine publications ?
I ❤Heart Radio, Clear Channel/Live Nation, and Disney?
They also have literal cults for followings who will pay $1000 for scalped tickets.
@@sawtooth808all majority stock owned by Black Rock along with damn near everything else plus there is another channel called barely sociable who ripped the damn Band-Aid right off. The rabbit hole on this one goes very very deep. The video is called something like the music industries darkest secret and to me it basically reveals a faction war
Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars. Everywhere from 2003-2006. Couldn't escape its grasp. Hated it.
Yep that piece of shit song was everywhere 😂
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.
This explains why you’d hear the same 6 songs playing over and over again
I love your narrative voice. You really bring out the crooks in these record labels as you imitate them.
That has to be why Marcy Playground's "Sex & Candy" was in constant rotation for over 20years on the only local Rock station here. I've never met anyone who actually liked that song but it played at least once an hour during work hours every. single. day.
"Everyone must bear down!!!!"
For midterms?
Man, you dropped a banger
I always thought back then that Green Day was indulging in something like this. I knew they were really popular at the time, but it was freaking CONSTANT on every radio station. I'd be hearing "Holiday" on one channel and change it to another, just to hear more "Holiday." Or American Idiot. Or Boulevard. It was every five minutes. So I just stuck with my tiny sandisk mp3 player a lot of the time
"I swear it's not an ad; now let me try to sell you this useless crap."
It definitely still happens. Theres a station here thats supposed to only play oldies, but somehow Taylor Swift is played daily, without fail. 🙃
I'm convinced Kings of Leon paid too,they were everywhere for years, i would spend 8 hours at work and hear their horrible songs every hour for years until they completely disappeared,never heard anything from them since
And here i thought the radio is supposed to pay the artists not the other way around
And all the payola benefits costs will have been taken out of the royalty payments (with interest) to the band - as the labels never pay for anything themselves.
Turntables in your band and Limewire overnight really spoke to me
We're eating good tonight.
Remember when Apple put that U2 album on everyone's iTunes? lol
I still respect that 311 has been consistently touring pretty much since they started, but I guess that can't entirely be related to a drive for music making
Not music related, but a certain giant radio company with a body part in its name got busted for its personalities endorsing products they didn’t use.
I love blur and Gorillaz
Fun linguistics fact, the plural for Attorney General is Attorneys General.
3:38 technically, it's "Attorneys General", not "Attorney Generals"
And now Payola is pretty much the industry standard.
Honestly like blockbuster I’m glad popular radio like this has pretty much died. You said alot that these big bands needed those promotion teams. I don’t think they did that’s just how much imaginary power stations held back then.
Having grown up in this era, I just always assumed that this was the case and nothing controversial. There was so much flash-in-pan filler and good, but riskier music was always a blip with few exceptions. Even if it was a big act someone had to grease palms for it to make it on the radio. The industry didn't like or care about music, all they ever cared about was the One Simple Trick that made them money.
the weird corporate art style really rubs against the anti-corporate messaging of the video..
Yup, I remember the '05 Payola scandal before I graduated from high school.