FCC Commissioner Asks RIAA to Investigate Payola Allegations
As detailed last month in Rolling Stone, pay-for-play continues to be a common feature of the radio business, with money or goods passing from the record labels to the radio stations to influence airplay. Enough time has passed [since the last payola lawsuits in the mid-2000s], nobodys gotten in trouble for a while, and nobody is scrutinizing this as tightly as they used to be, Matthew, a longtime alternative radio promoter, told Rolling Stone recently. Things are getting a little more lax.
On Wednesday, FCC commissioner Mike ORielly sent an official letter to the Recording Industry Association of America asking the trade organization to investigate possible violations of federal laws and regulations that expressly prohibit payola. Your association is uniquely situated to survey the practices of your industry and respond to press reports regarding alleged practices, ORielly writes. My primary goal is to get to the bottom of existing industry practices to determine whether the law is being followed or whether any problematic conduct must be addressed.
The Federal Communication Commission moved to prohibit undisclosed pay-for-play in 1960 following a congressional investigation of corruption at radio. But the regulations that were put in place were very weak. Payola has never been illegal, explains Tony Gray, a veteran of urban radio and the founder of Gray Communications. What is illegal is if you do the transaction and dont make it known to the audience that there was some financial support for you playing that song.
Because of the FCCs toothless regulations, it has rarely if ever taken serious action to curb payola. Earlier this year, an FCC source suggested that the organization was basically powerless to stop pay-for-play in its current form. My sense is its extremely common for there to be some kind of financial transaction taking place between the station and the label, the source said. But they just package it in a way that passes muster under our rules. The way they do it is basically exploiting loopholes in the law.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/payola-radio-fcc-riaa-letter-880304/