While many industry insiders are toasting the demise of the corrupt system, others are not yet raising their glasses, pointing out that indies have long been remarkably resilient. Back in 1981, upset about the influence amassed by a group of powerful indies known as the Network and costing record companies approximately $70 million each year, the two largest labels, Warner Bros. and Columbia, tried to spearhead an indie boycott. According to Fredric Dannen's 1990 exposé "Hit Men," the pushback collapsed when labels' marquee artists, such as the Who, revolted after having trouble getting their songs on the radio. (In theory, artists were all for shedding indies, as long as the unpleasant task didn't affect their chart position.)

Four years later, wrote Dannen, "The cost of independent promotion had become suffocating. After the industry blew its chance to abolish the Network in 1981, the promoters grew more powerful than ever, and their tabs went up accordingly." Desperate, the labels suggested the Recording Industry Association of America launch an investigation into indies. That investigation was shelved but the labels got the out they needed in 1986 when NBC journalist Brian Ross, aided by key record-company sources, aired a sensational report connecting indie heavyweights with organized crime. Within days of the Feb. 24, 1986, report, major labels such as Capitol Records and MCA announced they were no longer using indies. At the same time, then-U.S. attorney in New York Rudy Giuliani launched a federal grand jury investigation into indie promotion. And in April, Sen. Al Gore, D-Tenn., announced a new Senate probe into payola.

Neither, though, amounted to much, and over time the system reemerged, with the humbled indies charging just $700, rather than $3,000, for a song added to a major-market station. That's where the base rate stayed well into the '90s. But by 2001 the fees were just as outrageous as during the peak 1980s period chronicled in "Hit Men."

It was passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which drastically eased ownership limits for radio and spawned rampant consolidation, that juiced the promotion rates. Simultaneously, big-time indie firms like Jeff McClusky & Associates, which once represented just a couple dozen stations, cashed in on their long-term relationships with corporate owners and were soon doing business with hundreds of stations across the country. The ability to influence -- or at least to be seen as influencing -- so many playlists gave the indies extraordinary power, and they quickly leveraged it against record companies, jacking up their fees during the late '90s.

The indie promotion system at pop and rock radio soon evolved into an elaborate scheme where promoters were signing exclusive deals in order to "represent" certain stations, to act as a kind of middleman between the radio station and the record company. Generally, the indies paid that station an upfront annual fee, ranging from $100,000 to $400,000, depending on the station's ratings and market size. Stations were only too happy to cash those checks. Once that deal was signed and the station was "claimed," the indie was free to send out weekly invoices to record companies for every song that was added to that station's playlist.

The invoices added up. Every song added to an FM radio playlist came with a price: Roughly $800 per song in middle-size markets, $1,000 and more in larger markets, and up to about $5,000 per song for the biggest stations in the biggest markets. Most tightly controlled stations were annually adding between 150 and 200 songs to their playlists, a veritable fraction of the new songs released every year.

The beauty for the indie was that regardless of whether he had anything to do with convincing the station to play the song -- the music director may have already been a big fan of the band -- he got paid because the single was being played on his claimed station. Whereas indies were once desperate to get the songs they were hired to promote on the air, suddenly it didn't matter which songs their stations played because the indie got paid by the labels regardless. That's why indies were soon derided as opportunistic toll collectors.

And invoices for adds were just the first of many options indies had for billing labels. Another was called "spin maintenance"; if a label wanted to boost the number of times a song was getting played at certain stations, it could simply write a check to the station's indie. As one label executive concedes, "Whoever spent the most money got the most records added on radio that week." That's not how the American broadcasting business is supposed to operate. "In theory, the idea is that the industry is meritocracy; that if you're talented and work hard, you rise to the top," says Toomey at the Future of Music Coalition. In this perfect world, radio stations themselves would scout new and adventurous artists, and introduce them to listeners. "But when independent promotion limits access to the airwaves, then that's not the case," says Toomey.

Today, though, the irony is that the besieged indie system may not open the doors for new acts at commercial FM radio. Artists and their advocates had hoped that if the costly pay-for-play system were ever dismantled, it would clear the way for a broader range of acts, particularly on smaller labels, to compete for airplay without having to write six-figure checks; that radio might become something resembling a meritocracy. But some industry insiders fear the opposite will happen; that without indies working the phones on their behalf, smaller labels and their acts will have an even harder time getting the attention of major-market programmers.

"How are we going to get anybody at Clear Channel or Infinity stations to listen to our records? We can't get those programmers on the phone," says the head of one independently owned label that has produced, with the help of indies, top 10 hits in the past. "A lot of people look at indie promotion as a cancerous thing. Ultimately it's not that simple. There was a lot of corruption but there was also a legitimate function. They've been a way for independent music, if they could scrape together the money, to be on equal playing field as the majors are."

Even radio promotion veterans on staff at established, well-funded labels are concerned about getting their new acts, or "baby bands,'' on the air without the help of indies. "The good news is it will be less expensive for us to do business. The bad news is it's going to be harder to break new acts," summarizes one label promotion executive. "How are we going to get a baby band with two mid-charting singles on the radio other than just begging?"

The fear is that without indies, radio programmers, paid first and foremost to secure high ratings for stations that in some markets now carry price tags in excess of $100 million, will rely more and more on proven hit singles as well as older, already-familiar songs, leaving less airtime for new acts. "Radio stations don't get ratings through playing a lot of new music, they get ratings through repetition and familiarity," says one indie veteran. "You think Infinity [in the wake of its indie ban] will all of a sudden say, 'Hey, let's play lots of new music!'? It doesn't work that way. I think the playlists will get tighter."

Already facing a shrinking audience, as fans of new and adventurous music continue to flee radio in search of freewheeling -- and commercial-free -- alternatives like the Internet and satellite radio to hear their favorite artists, pop music stations, with their increasingly tight playlists, may finally be writing their own doom. If so, this time indies won't be around to take the blame.

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