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Last week New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer announced an agreement with the Sony-BMG Music Entertainment Corporation to halt the pervasive "pay-for-play" (also known as payola) phenomena in the music industry. Under the terms of the agreement Sony, one of the largest record companies worldwide, agreed to stop giving expensive gifts and payments to radio station employees in exchange for playing their songs on the radio airwaves.

As a result of anonymous tips, the New York Attorney General's office conducted a year-long investigation which hit pay dirt revealing that SONY BMG and its record labels had engaged in a series of activities to induce radio stations and their employees to obtain airplay for the recordings by the company's artists. Among other things, the New York State Attorney's office uncovered e-mails during the investigation which revealed that senior Sony executives were well aware of the payoffs and perceived them to be an effective means to ensure the company got sufficient airplay for its record labels.

And these activities were quite extensive including: outright bribes to radio programmers, including expensive vacation packages, electronics and other valuable items; contest giveaways for stations' listening audiences; payments to radio stations to cover operational expenses; retention of middlemen, known as independent promoters, as conduits for illegal payments to radio stations; payments for "spin programs," airplay under the guise of advertising.

Perhaps most interesting about this agreement is that it undercuts the music industry's arguments filed in Supreme Court briefs by Sony and other representatives of the music industry about the ills of downloading popular music. Instead, this agreement suggests that supporters of Napster and Grokster were right all along.

You see, the music industry claims that downloading music from the internet or other forms of digital copying hurt the industry's bottom line by preventing sales that would ordinarily occur but for the piracy. On its face the straightforward argument that every time a listener can get music for free that he or she would otherwise pay for, the performer loses. Even if true, that has never been the real position of the recording industry.

From the beginning the industry has recognized that exposure is the primary means by which artists develop a following. And it only with a following that artists can profit. Thus the industry tries to do as much as it can to put the artist in front of the public -- in this case it seems even to the point of illegally bribing DJ's to play their songs regardless of whether they are "popular" or not.

Obvious to all but the most uninitiated, the industry understands that exposure to listeners is the key to any artist succeeding. The best artist in the world will not be appreciated if they are never heard. From the beginning of "show business" word of mouth and demand by consumers has been recognized as crucial to a performer's success regardless of the medium.

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