Alan Freed still casts a long shadow: the persistence of payola and the ambiguous value of music

Abstract

Despite the enormous changes in the music industry in recent years, some things have persisted. Payola, the exchange of money or promotional consideration for radio airplay, has persisted if not increased over the past decade in the United States. This is due to the corresponding persistence of a series of contradictory social relationships between broadcasters, their sponsors and the audiences they seek to construct and maintain through the targeted deployment of music. I show here that payola, and its more legitimate cousin deregulation, are forms of ‘inter-elite communication’ designed to make the market in music more manageable and stable.