T H E D I G I TA L U N D E R G R O U N D

Public Enemy first entered the fray, the business of pop music was

driven by a diĆłerent set of rules, costs, and new commercial realities.

The high cost scenario that Chuck D described to the House

Committee was emblematic of the increasingly high-stakes industry

pop music had become. By 2000, artists, music labels, media ac-

tivists, legislators, and even some radio programmers began express-

ing concerns about the �śpay-for-play” arrangements that determined

which songs most radio listeners were exposed to. In his investigation of the changes that reshaped the face of commercial radio, Salon.com senior writer Eric Boehlert concluded that �śvirtually all the songs

played on a typical commercial radio station�"known as �Śadds’ in

the trade�"are paid for.” The rise of pay-for-play was disheartening

for artists, costly to record companies, and detrimental to listeners.

Songs made it on the radio, not because they were necessarily good or genuinely preferred by listeners but, because the record labels paid out huge sums of money to gain the spins necessary to put a song in

position to be a radio and commercial hit. It was that kind of corpo-rate money game that rendered groups who did not fit into the

proven formulas of the day virtually obsolete in the new world order of pop music.

Most disturbing, it was not simply a widespread practice but also

accepted as a legitimate means for determining playlists. Pay-for-play suggested that for all of the talk about greater consumer choice and diversity of media content, pop music tastes, trends, and charts were still being manipulated. Only this time the controlling force was a

new and even more powerful radio establishment.

Radio’s power to determine pop hits is a sign of how much and

how little has changed in the music industry. While MTV may be the

glamorous face of music promotion, radio is still the real backbone.

Despite the visual magic of the music video in crafting and selling an image, radio is still the most important medium in selling records.

Radio maintains an intimacy with music audiences that music video

can never achieve. The medium, despite its problems, is personal,

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