Question: Does payola still exist today?
Answer: This is a complex subject, but the short answer is yes. Payola never really went away in the music industry, mainly because it's so hard to catch: anyone can give a friend a gift, can't they? Every few years, noises are made about payola and its investigation, but nothing really gets done, in part because the driving forces in the music industry today are record labels, not disc jockeys. In fact, four major record labels -- Universal, Sony BMG, EMI, and Warner -- provide most of what's heard on the radio in some form, and they have very cozy and very hard-to-define relationships with the forces behind radio (itself shrinking into a handful of major players like Clear Channel and Infiniti). It doesn't happen any less often now than it ever did -- mostly, now as then, it's used as a device for breaking new acts.
