Steaks and Snowtires

As a music industry vet, I am ambivalent about what we euphemistically call “independent promotion.”

Before I entered the business, “payola” meant bribery. After a few years in it, the money my companies paid to indies (read: “middlemen”) and the gifts we gave to DJs were simply the cost of doing business.

And here’s the funny thing about Spitzer’s current witch hunt, and all payola investigations. Nobody in the business itself is ever really outraged. Not even the artists, who often scream when they’re not getting enough indie promotion. It’s only people outside the business who express shock and dismay. As if removing indie promotion would completely wipe Britanny Spears and Celine Dion from the airwaves.

In hip-hop, it used to be about what a DJ liked to play. In the late 80s and early 90s, the mix shows seemed to be the last bastion of purity in all of radio. That ended quickly once programmers started relying heavily on the advice of their rap jocks, using the mix-shows as a proving ground for new records.

Majors began throwing money at mix-show jocks for many records that they probably would have played anyway. They became used to taking “favors” for playing even the records that they liked. So when it came time for them to play yours, you could get a few spins on the strength, or you could pay their side company to do some “street promotion” and get some real support.

For a good record to which you’ve given a year of your life, it was a no-brainer.

An excerpt from an old diary:

“At the local station, XXXX was no longer the rap attack champion. But on the same day we went down to defeat there, we won for the first time at the station across town. Keeping XXXX champion there, however, involved more than just getting all my friends to call the station at 8pm. Every day I’d call the station and ask, ‘Did we win?’ And the answer would be, ‘You didn’t, but you did.’ Soon, I was buying car stereo systems and rims and getting windows tinted and booking plane flights for people I didn’t even know.”