Today's hits are so gosh-awful bad. We figured big industry interests were merely swaying public opinion through mass marketing (we've mentioned this in connection with our American Idol criticism). Now, it appears much of it has been just good ol' payola, of the Alan Freed variety. Link. Excerpt:
[I]nternal memos from Sony Music, revealed today in the New York state attorney general's investigation of payola at the company, will be mind blowing to those who are not so jaded to think records are played on the radio because they're good. We've all known for a long time that contemporary pop music stinks. We hear "hits" on the radio and wonder, "How can this be?"
Now we know. And memos from both Sony's Columbia and Epic Records senior vice presidents of promotions circa 2002-2003 – whose names are redacted in the reports but are well known in the industry – spell out who to pay and what to pay them in order to get the company's records on the air.
