Pop & Payola

[crash46]

I was going to just put this in that All-American Rejects topic, after the point about "Dirty Little Secret" being buoyed by payola led me to think "Yeah, but seriously, which songs in the top half of the pop chart have no payola involved?" but after a major regression, the reply needed to be up here on its own.

• Are the pussy cat dolls really big enough to get to #1 on their own with that piece of crap?

• Oh look, X Brown finally got to #1 after about 18 months of holding steady around the top 10. I suppose all the radio stations were watching the charts like hawks waiting for him to reach that top spot so they all could drop the song all at once like an anchor through water, with no regrets!

• Who the hell is Ne-Yo, what's it mean (probably something really dumb), and why is pop jumping all over this newcomer for no reason.

• Hey, all of the sudden Mariah Carey falls 2000 spins in one week? Did she bash Bush in the UK last week? I wonder why everyone simultaneously decided to cut the song so much!

• The Fall Out Boy being the first rock act that I can remember since watching Mediabase to debut before impacting while being a newbie is a major white flag as well.

• And what has Juelz Santana done outside of being the featured artist on that "Oh Boy" song from 4 years ago.

• (maybe this isn't payola now, but what's up with "Feel Good Inc" rising back up 5 spots with a bullet, when they have a current single that I've already mentioned that it's even more tailored for pop than this one is.)

I used to be able to just laugh payola off, but now it's becoming extremely irritating. I seriously think payola is worse than I can ever remember it being, and that it's all a backlash of how successful digital music has become. Now the record companies are taking the promotional dollars they used to allocate toward CD's and are pushing songs more than ever, and the most convenient method of advertising those songs is to hear them constantly on the radio. And as a result, people like me who still prefer full-length albums on a physical medium have to pick up the slack with higher CD prices. Seriously, out of all the CD's I bought people for Christmas, not one of them was under $13.99. I have never found it this much of a struggle to find a decent deal on a CD.

The recording industry continues to always find new ways to piss me off.

[slinky]

I don't think every large drop can be explained by payola. Some songs just don't have legs. That's the way it always has been.

The best indication of payola or ahem... "promotional consideration" is overnight spins... always has been. If a station is giving a lot of spins to a song when no one can hear it, there's probably a reason.

Debut before impact week is generally an indication of NON-payola spins, especially in Fallout Boy's case where "Sugar, We're Going Down" was doing well at the time "Dance Dance" took off. Record companies make these impact dates for a reason and they don't kick the promotional machine into high gear until that impact date nears. Ne-yo I think is doing well of his own accord. Women love that song, and it's a solid, hooky R&B ballad from a newcomer that's been named one to watch this year by a number of critics.

While payola is annoying, equally annoying are those that scream "PAYOLA!" every time a song they dislike hits it big. Not accusing you of this because you gave some solid explanations, but I do see this on the boards a lot.

[crash46]

"Promotional Consideration"...heh, I like it.

I'm not a believer in the overnight spins theorem. It may be true, or it may just be like a testing period for new songs by unproven artists. I remember back before R and R listed its most added songs, we all had to read this callout research page that had adds figures every week, and it also included comments from a PD or MD at nearly every station on the panel where they recommend a few new songs that have been recently added. You'd see all the time those directors would cite the positive reaction a song had been receiving through its overnight plays as a reason to add the song. Perhaps that's just their cover-up. Who knows. Either way, that's not foolproof.

I don't think a big drop from a song that's been dropping exponentially is unnatural, but when a song's got a bullet and then losing thousands of spins two weeks later, that's totally unnatural in almost every case one could possibly think of, seasonal songs aside.

[slinky]

crash46 said:

You'd see all the time those directors would cite the positive reaction a song had been receiving through its overnight plays as a reason to add the song. Perhaps that's just their cover-up. Who knows. Either way, that's not foolproof.

I'd never actually noticed that. Night spins, absolutely they use to judge reaction. But since most radio stations don't even have anyone in the building during overnights anymore, I don't see how they could be getting feedback during those times. The request lines are disconnected.

[crash46]

Ah. Every radio station I've ever followed except for one has overnight jocks, so I would've never realized it was common for there not to be any.

[a Nick O!]

Well even then, unless a DJ says "by request" or something on the overnights, I don't believe it's uncommon for an afterhours DJ to record his spots in advance, turn on automation and go home. But I guess that just depends. I know that's what my local country station did or does, I saw, when I worked at the talk/sports radio station in the same building five years ago.