on the "free to take" section at her office and thought I'd be interested in reading it. She was damn right as I'd actually just recently added it to the mental list of books I wanted to try to plow through on my week off from work. I'm almost done. For the most part it's been very satisfying, pretty much everything I expected... but the most informative part for me so far is its inclusion of the best description I've ever read of the "legal" way that radio stations and record labels work around the payola laws, included here:
What's illegal is payola, when a record company pays a station to play a particular song, and the station plaus the song without disclosing the record company's payment to the listeners. There is, however, a way around this prohibition - independent radio promoters. Imagine an alternative rock station called WXYZ. Now imagine independent radio promoter named Bob Tapeworm. Tapeworm goes to WXYZ and says, "Give me an exclusive peek at your playlist before you announce it each week over the next twelve months, and I'll pay you a hundred thousand dollars." Now Tapeworm has exclusive access to WXYZ and WXYZ has additional income - which is "legal", as we will see. Tapeworm calls up the record label and says, "If you want your songs played on WXYZ, you have to hire me." MCA, like the other labels says "Okay, Mr. Tapeworm, here's a thousand dollars. Help us get [song title] added to WXYZ's playlist." The record company's accounting records will show "consulting fee" payments to Tapeworm, the radio stations records will show revenue from Tapeworm's "consultant contract," and since there's no identifiable link between payments from the record companies to Tapeworm and payments from Tapeworm to the station none of it is "illegal." -- (buy from amazon)
Between that bullshit and the price fixing lawsuit that was settled a few years back, it's pretty great to know that technology has knocked these greedy fuckers down a notch or two. It's rare that the little guy gets back at the big guy, but when it does it certainly is sweet. I say that fully aware that there is another party, musicians, that might be getting the shaft in this deal, but that's a whole different discusscion for a whole different time.
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In that regard, I'd like to freely distribute two MP3s from the new Jon Auer (Posies) record called Songs From The Year of Our Demise. Of the 15 tracks, about 11 of them are bonafide fucking winners and the remaining four aren't half-bad either. Listen to these, love them, and then get to fucking buying. I will be as soon as I get my next paycheck.
* Jon Auer - Bottom Of The Bottle
* Jon Auer - The Likes Of You
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You can view the pictures from Marissa and I's excellent week in Italy here. I'll add captions sometime today.
3 comments:
youre such a shill
I always thought being a shill implied that there's a vested interest in the recommendations. I'd prefer to receive some sort of compensation for my stupid rambling about crap that no one else likes - but for better or worse my only payment is the hope that people stop liking things that [in my probably wrong opinion) suck, and take my recommendations instead.
shine on you crazy diamonds!
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