I found this online...thought you guys would be interested in how corrupt things really are in the current music biz...

Warner Music Payola Scandal

Warner Music Group has agreed to pay a $5 million fine after an investigation by New York State Attorney General Elliott Spitzer's office found that the company has been involved in complicated payola schemes.

This comes after Spitzer's office levied a $10 million fine on Sony BMG music earlier this summer.

As in the Sony BMG scandal, Spitzer's office has released a detailed account of how Warner Music execs got their records played on the radio by paying off deejays in various ways.

The announcement by Spitzer's office details: "Direct bribes to radio programmers, including airfare, electronics, tickets to premier sporting events and concerts; Payments to radio stations to cover operational expenses; Radio contest giveaways for stations' listening audiences, including flyaways, concert tickets, iPods, gift certificates and gift cards; Hiring independent promoters to act as conduits for illegal payments to radio stations; Purchasing 'spin programs' to artificially increase the airplay of particular recordings."

In settling the investigation, Warner's has signed an Assurance of Discontinuance in which they agree not to continue these practices.

There's lots of good stuff in the Warner's agreement, particularly citing former Buffalo KSE program director Dave Universal as a willing participant in payola.

"According to Warner Music Employees, Mr. Universal always required something to add a song. An Atlantic promotion manager added, "We all did business with Dave. We all had to do business with Dave if we were going to get our records on. And it was a game that you either played or you didn't have a shot at getting your records on the air."

Several stations owned by Clear Channel were cited as being very open to payola. And Warner execs talk in the settlement about how important it is to buy "spins" of their records on Clear Channel syndicated shows hosted by Carson Daly, Ryan Seacrest and Rick Dees.

Warner's biggest acts -- from Madonna and Green Day to Linkin Park and Josh Groban -- are affected by this settlement. It didn't seem to matter whether the various gifts and giveaways involved new acts you've never heard of or established ones like REM.

What comes out of this settlement even more clearly than from the Sony BMG one, though, is the complicity of the radio stations. It's not even complicity, it's solicitation. The radio stations are clearly blackmailing the record companies, and the record companies are caving in without question.

It will be more interesting I think to see how Spitzer's office deals with a conglomerate like Clear Channel, whose stations seem to require payoffs to get records on their air.

I almost figured this topic should be titled "Warner Music - Hey Does This Surprise Anyone - Scandal?"

But hell yeah, I REALLY JUST CANT WAIT to see Clear Channel blown out of the water and run out of town strapped to a pig. It's nice the way the record labels are somehow able to turn the blame to Clear though... as if they were merely victims here.

Payola's been going on IVever!

'dre

DreZone said:

Exactly. Since day one.

Payola is the reason we aren't millionaires right now.

Between that and Sony's CD blooper...
man I hope everyone who is affected by this takes SONY to court.
[Edited 11/24/05 11:24am]

Red said:

First lawsuit of many. Let the fun begin.

(CelebrityAccess MediaWire) -- Finkelstein, Thompson & Loughran filed a lawsuit against Sony BMG Entertainment, LLC ("Sony") on November 29 in connection with its use of so-called Digital Rights Management software on their music CDs. This suit was filed by a resident of the District of Columbia on behalf of the general public of the District.

The lawsuit was filed in the District of Columbia Superior Court under a provision in the District of Columbia's Consumer Protection and Procedures Act that allows a resident to act as a "private attorney general" and to seek relief on behalf of the general public. The suit alleges that Sony deceptively installed software on users' computers, compromised the security of users' computers and that Sony's purported attempts to curb the damage caused by its spyware programs have created even greater security risks for Sony's consumers.

The lawsuit alleges that by surreptitiously encoding its CDs with XCP and MediaMax software for the purported purpose of securing its intellectual property, Sony has endangered the security of personal information for computer users throughout the District of Columbia. To date, nearly 5 million copies of the XCP encoded CDs and nearly 20 million of the MediaMax encoded CDs have been sold. District of Columbia residents have played these disks on their personal computers and thus have had their systems unwittingly compromised. To date, several viruses have been reported that exploit the weakness that was created by the surreptitious installation of the spyware on their computers. Consumers are at risk from these and future viruses that will destroy software and steal personal information.

Sony is also facing at least six class action lawsuits nationwide and an action by the Texas Attorney General.