Editing Payola (section)

==Criticism==
On 25 September 2007, the U.S. Congress held a hearing on hip hop music entitled ''From [[Don Imus|Imus]] to Industry: The Business of Stereotypes and Degrading Images''.<ref>[http://democrats.energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?q=archive/110th-congress/from-imus-to-industry-the-business-of-stereotypes-and-degrading-images "From Imus to Industry: The Business of Stereotypes and Degrading Images"], Committee on Energy & Commerce, accessed on 20 September 2011.</ref> In her testimony, Lisa Fager Bediako, co-founder and President of [[media watchdog group]] Industry Ears,<ref>{{cite web|title=LisaBio|url=http://www.industryears.com/blog/lisabio/|publisher=IndustryEars.Com|accessdate=25 July 2014}}</ref> argued that [[misogynistic]] and [[racist]] stereotypes permeate [[hip hop music]] because record labels, radio stations, and music video channels profit from allowing such material to air while censoring other material. In that context, Fager stated:

{{Blockquote|Payola is no longer the local DJ receiving a couple dollars for airplay; it is now an organized corporate crime that supports the lack of balanced content and demeaning imagery with no consequences.<ref>[http://www.c3.ucla.edu/newsstand/media/from-imus-to-industry-the-business-of-degradation-in-rap-music/ "From Imus-to-Industry: The Business of Degradation in Rap Music"], UCLA Center for Communications & Community, October 3, 2007.</ref>}}

===Satire of payola practices===
{{original research|section|date=November 2021}}

In 1960, [[Stan Freberg]] did a parody on the Payola Scandal, by calling it "Old Payola Roll Blues", a two-sided single, where the promoter gets an ordinary teenager, named Clyde Ankle, to record a song, for Obscurity Records, entitled "High School OO OO", and then tries to offer the song to a jazz radio station with phony deals that the disc jockey just won't buy it. It ends with an anti-rock song, saying hello to jazz and swing, and goodbye to amateur nights, including rock and roll.

The [[Vancouver]] [[New wave music|new wave]] band the [[Payola$]] chose their moniker during the punk explosion of the late 1970s.

The practice is criticized in the chorus of the [[Dead Kennedys]] song "[[Pull My Strings]]", a parody of the song "[[My Sharona]]" ("My Payola") sung to a crowd of music industry leaders during a music award ceremony.

The [[They Might Be Giants]] song "Hey, Mr. DJ, I Thought You Said We Had a Deal" is about the practice. It is narrated from the point of view of a naive and inexperienced musician who has been coerced by a [[disc jockey]] into paying for airplay{{spaced ndash}}the disc jockey then disappears and does not deliver on his promise.

The practice is satirized in song "Payola Blues" by [[Neil Young]], from his 1983 album ''[[Everybody's Rockin']]''. It opens by saying "This one's for you, Alan Freed" and then states {{"'}}Cause the things they're doing today would make a saint out of you", implying that Payola corruption is bigger now (or was bigger in the 1980s) than it was in the 1950s.

Payola is referenced in [[Billy Joel]]'s song "[[We Didn't Start the Fire]]", during the verse dealing with the events of 1960.

On a Washington, D.C. radio station in 1999, the disc jockeys announced that they were debuting the [[Lou Bega]] song "[[Mambo Number 5]]", by saying that they had accepted a large amount of payola to play the song. Ironically, if they had actually been paid to play the song on the air, it would not have been payola, because payola is the ''unannounced'' acceptance of a payment to run a song. If the song is identified before being played as being done because the talent or station is being paid to do so, the playing of the song and acceptance of money to do so is perfectly legal, and does not constitute payola. {{Citation needed|date=April 2024|reason=No citations for the DJs, station, or the statement given.}}

Payola was depicted in the film ''[[The Harder They Come]]'', released in 1972, where a record producer, not the recording artist, controls the airwaves. The portrayal of its protagonist ([[Jimmy Cliff]]) as an aspiring musician who is forced to sign away his rights to make a hit record depicts the role of record producers and radio DJs as a dominance – the musician ends up with no aspirations or living the same lifestyle, as in the case of the film ''Rockers''.{{citation needed|date=November 2021}}

In an installment of ''[[Mathnet]]'' from [[PBS]]'s [[Square One Television]], the detectives George Frankly and Pat Tuesday investigated a case of suspected payola by forming a fictitious group called "The [[Googol]]s" and creating their own song titled "Without Math". Payola was eventually ruled out as a cause of increased sales of particular songs at a company.