More payola news for you - hurrah. The Universal Music Group yesterday became the third major record company to reach a settlement with New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer over allegations of payola.
As previously reported, Spitzer has been investigating the use of payola - essentially bribing radio stations to give artists airplay - for over a year now and he has already reached settlements with SonyBMG and Warner Music after unearthing evidence of marketing execs and the third party radio promoters they employed providing payments or expensive gifts to radio programmers in order to get their tracks playlisted.
Sptizer's investigation into the practices of Universal's US record labels showed evidence of the record company providing radio execs with free electronics, vacations, flights, hotel accommodation and tickets to major sport events and concerts. Spitzer also claims the label funded expensive promotions on behalf of radio stations, participated in advertising based pay-for-play schemes and used independent promoters to funnel payments to the radio stations. Artists who benefited from the payola tactics, which the Attorney General says contravene US rules on radio programming, include Nick Lachey, Ashlee Simpson, Brian McKnight, Big Tymers and Lindsay Lohan.
Admitting some wrong doing in this domain, the Universal Music Group has pledged to pay a $12 million fine which will be made in the form of a charitable donation to not-for-profit music education programmes in New York State. The major will also introduce measures to stop payola tactics being used by its marketing teams in the future.
Confirming their settlement with Spitzer, Universal told reporters: "We have been working cooperatively with the Attorney General's office in resolving these promotion issues and are pleased to have completed the process with this agreement. The reforms that we have agreed to with the Attorney General are consistent with the policies that we voluntarily implemented over a year ago".
EMI is now the only major record company yet to settle with Spitzer. The Attorney General's investigations into their promotional practices are ongoing. Investigations also continue regarding the other side of this equation - ie what exactly the radio companies were doing accepting all these bribes (presumably what they were doing was having a very good time with all those freebies thank your very much). Most of the radio companies are still under investigation though, as previously reported, Spitzer has already launched legal proceedings against US radio conglom Entercom who, as far as we now, still plan to fight him in the courts over the whole thing.