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| From | Ralph Alfonso <ralph@nettwerk.com> |
| Subject | payola thread (bare) |
| Date | Tue, 26 Jul 2005 18:02:09 -0700 |
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>Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2005 16:36:45 EDT
>From: GaryPig@aol.com
>To: audities@smoe.org
>Subject: Re: payola
>Message-ID: <13d.17f4fc1a.3017f8dd@aol.com>
>
>
><< ......(Soundscan cleaned up all the
>phony retail reporting that used to go on).... >>
>
>
>Ralph?
>
>but Did I ever tell ya the story about a good pal who,
>interning at a semi-indie label right after Soundscan kicked in,
>was sent at least once a day all round town
>to buy up multiple copies
>(often totalling well into the hundreds)
>of her employers' latest releases??
>
>Not sure if this is exactly ** payola ** per se,
>
>Gary "and What about all those kids who were given a dollar bill and a free
>Fab sweatshirt if they promised to head out to a certain airport in New York
>in order to greet a brand new British band en route to the Ed Sullivan Show??"
>Pig
>
the BEST was Island -or whoever owned them at the time- putting the
bar code to Bob Marley's greatest hits cd on some other cd they were
trying to hype up the chart.... they got caught pretty quick (doofus
who thought of that one obviously didn't know about modern inventory
systems - but it had an inert slimey brilliance)
the second best was Prince giving away a free cd with each concert
ticket & then reporting those cds as
gig sales to Soundscan (that is no longer allowed)...
.... a famous manager once showed me his 60s promotion technique -
you show up at radio with a single
and tell the dj, "this one's a priority for us" & when the dj pulled
out the vinyl, a 100 dollar bill came out as well and the dj would
go, "yeah, I think this has a lot of potential for sure!"....
the kids at the Beatles airport - that was a recycle of the same
thing for Frank Sinatra in the 40s (may have
been the same PR guy... it's a well documented tale....)
the problem with all this catering to every whim of radio & press is
you create an insatiable appetite and false
sense of importance with some of these guys (some of whom are paid
poorly) to the point where they dictate
a lot of the excess and ever escalating demands.... once the industry
creates these Frankensteins, it is hard to
stop these monsters.... some of the craziest most screwed up people I
met were not the musicians, believe it or not, but some of these
radio, press, and label guys - some of them were completely out of
line and out of control... don't let me get started on some of the
UK journos - ay caramba! - i'm sure veteran band folks on this list
can say more than i can on this topic :)
again - a lot of this is from my 80s days - it may be different now -
i certainly don't see any of it at my level of things... coming up
from the 77 punk scene - a lot of this really soured me on the music
industry but I was prepared in many ways as I'd seen the Privilege
movie when i was younger and the music industry as depicted in that
movie was pretty much the way it was when i got in there.... anyway,
all good war stories to share over a beer one day, that's for sure...
hahahaaaa....
Ralph
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