Salon on Payola

Here’s a great pair of links from a couple days back. Salon has done some reporting on the current state of payola in the music business. Technically, what they’re doing right now is not payola, because that would be illegal. But it amounts to the same thing and it’s one part of the reason that music is priced so outrageously. Also of note is a comment in the slashdot thread, where someone pointed out how natural payola is and how those “greedy record companies” don’t really make much money because 90% of albums fail.