If you’re one of those people who believes that US commercial radio sucks, a new study from the Future of Music Coalition (FMC) provides some empirical support as to just how it sucks. Despite vowing to change its ways, big radio programmers are amazingly conservative; much of the music they play comes from major labels, and it tends to be older (and well-known) material. Not even government consent decrees have been able to change that.
With the major labels currently pushing hard to make radio stations pay (more) to play music, it’s easy to forget that only two years ago, the two groups were caught up in a big payola scandal—that is, the labels were paying the stations to push particular songs. After New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and the FCC both shut down the practice, the radio stations agreed to all sorts of things, including $12.5 million in fines and a “set-aside” of 4,200 programming hours for independent artists.
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