In 1999, I released my first “real” solo album titled Vestavia.1 I did everything I could think of (and afford) to make the record as successful as I could. I considered it my last-ditch effort to have a career as an artist before I chucked it and did something crazy like go to law school. I believed in the music, but I had a nagging sense of desperation. Something had to work.
Vestavia got some good press and airplay on some of the more adventurous college, non-commercial, and community stations. The real prize, however, eluded me. By 1999, “alternative radio” was at its peak. Sugar Ray, Cake, Smash Mouth, Goo Goo Dolls, the emergence of rap/rock hybrids like Limp Bizkit; if you’re over 35 you remember. Huge commercial stations with names like “The Edge” or “The X” moved truckloads of CDs in markets around the country. Any real success for Vestavia would include getting airplay on at least a few of these stations. A hit on alternative radio would be like having a massive viral moment today, or getting added to MTV in the 80s. Radio was the biggest gatekeeper of all.
One big station in a nearby Southeastern market started playing a song from Vestavia a handful of times without ever actually adding the record. The few late-night and weekend spins actually sold CDs and tickets in the market, so I decided to research how to go about getting an actual playlist add. I asked an acquaintance who had a relationship with the station to lunch. For some reason he decided to actually fill me in on what went on behind the scenes in Big Commercial Radio.
He explained that, to get an add, I’d have to hire a specific independent regional promoter to work that station. This one random guy was the gatekeeper to the station, and other similar stations in the region. Since they’d played the record on the air, we’d established that it was considered to be good enough quality to add into regular rotation. All it would take was this one random guy initiating some sort of transaction. It would cost a couple thousand dollars.
What he described was, of course, an illegal payola scheme. Every label’s promotional team knew how it worked and everybody kept quiet about it. My acquaintance described this in a very matter-of-fact way, giving me the essential insider information. I thanked him profusely as I picked up the check.
That was such a strange feeling - empowering but also creepy. I’d read Hit Men, the expose on Payola from the early 80s whereby the investigative reporter described an experiment whereby Epic Records’ promo team decided to withhold payment to an independent promoter for Pink Floyd’s mega-smash hit Another Brick In The Wall Part 2 for the 2 biggest rock stations in Los Angeles. Despite the song being on every rock radio playlist in the country, these specific stations never added the song. That’s how the second big Payola scandal came to light. It was about to happen again in 2002 when New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer took up the cause. But in 1999, I thought Payola was a thing of the past. But it never really went away, and in that moment it flourished.
Having this insider knowledge placed me at the horns of a dilemma. I wanted my song on the radio. Now I knew how to get it done. It certainly felt gross and wrong and I knew in the abstract that the whole thing was probably (OK definitely) illegal, but I wasn’t going to blow the whistle or change the system. With everyone quietly playing along, I wasn’t personally at risk. What’s wrong with hiring a promoter! If payola is the game, then why not play?
I convinced my tiny label to pony up the money to buy the add. I had a plan to buy adds one at a time and shift my focus market-to-market. But then….I didn’t do it. I wasted too much time pondering the consequences. The opportunity came and went, and that was the end of the album cycle, and effectively the end of my career.
Would it have made a difference in my life if I’d hired that shady regional promoter for the big commercial radio add, and then made it my marketing strategy? I don’t think so. I’d have played some good shows and sold a few more CDs, but that wouldn’t have changed anything long-term. I listen to the record now and I can’t imagine it working next to All Star, Every Morning, Nookie, and all that other dreck that clogged the airwaves.2 That was a truly awful time for music, the final death of the dream for anyone who came up in 80s underground rock. In hindsight, I’m proud that I didn’t participate. But if I’m being completely honest it’s mostly just because I put off the decision until it was too late.
Years later, over a decade ago, I shared a cab ride in Austin during SXSW with one of the architects of 90s Rock Radio. He coordinated national campaigns for major label projects, paying regional promoters all over the country for airplay. He really opened up to me and explained every part of it. We were stuck in traffic, so he really got into the details. The “fly-away promotions” for programmers to exotic locales. The lavish parties, drugs, and escorts. The insane amount of money fueling all manner of debauchery. He missed the old days, before Spitzer fucked everything up.
I asked what it was like then, early 2010s. He told me sure, it still goes on. Everything’s just very discrete. It isn’t enough to just have a straw man delivering the value. Later, as a label head, I noted that radio promotion is inexplicably expensive. Nobody could give me a great answer on why it cost so much to pursue a nationwide campaign, and I had the sense that a lot of people working in promotion didn’t know either. Indie promoters are necessary, and they charge a lot. Why? Becuase they can get your record added to the right playlists. Don’t ask; don’t tell.
Music is a relationship business. Insiders have access to the inner-workings, and most artists are on the outside looking in. I’m sure it’s very frustrating for a lot of the old-timers that algorithms serve as the gatekeepers in the emerging business. Will the powers-that-be figure out how to build multiple layers of grift around the social and streaming machinery? Clearly there are opportunities reserved for insiders. That will always be the case. However, it’s up to all of us to keep things fair and honest, and do everything we can to make sure criminals and grifters don’t keep the gates to promotion, publicity, and marketing going forward.
It’s long been my belief that what we call payola should have been legal and fully out in the open. I have a deep love for radio, especially non-commercial (or occasionally even commercia) stations that play what they want. Imagine a world where commercial stations had to disclose that their playlist amounted to advertising, while the honest stations could build their brand on not being for sale. But none of that will matter in the future, because radio will never have the stronghold on the music business it had before digital. Now I believe the effort should be to recreate the great things about radio in the digital ecosystem, and make sure we don’t ever make the same mistakes that take value away from artists and give it to people and institutions who unfairly hold power over the business.
I released an album in 1996 with a band called Hello Strangers titled Caledonia, which sort of became a solo album when the owner of the trademark for Hello Strangers let me know I did not have permission to use the name. Therefore, “John P. Strohm and the Hello Strangers” became John P. Strohm. A solo album of sorts, but not by design. Vestavia was the first real solo album, a collaboration with producer Ed Ackerson.
I haven’t mentioned the Telecommunications Act of 1997, which is what really ruined the music business in the 90s and beyond.