A Doo-Wop chord progression, or the 50’s progression, follow the I-vi-IV-V pattern. If you were looking at it in the key of F major, the chords would be as follows: FM-dm-BbM-C. This chord progression was popular throughout the 1950’s and early 1960’s. It was commonly used in rock ballads from that time. 1
To familiarize yourself with how this progression sounds, take a listen to the four chords being played in succession.
Octopus’s Garden by The Beatles is an example of how the Doo-Wop progression is used. You can hear it in the guitar and bass guitar as soon as the singing starts and it continues throughout the majority of the song.
If you listen to Baby by Justin Bieber, you can also hear this progression at the very beginning of the song. It moves from the I-vi-IV-V.
This video shows how many different songs use the same chord progression. I’d like to note how many songs can sound different, however, the majority of them can follow the same chord progressions ( take a look at the 4 Chord Song by the Axis of Awesome for another example of the repetition of chords by a variety of musicians.)
Since this progression is normally done in cycles, Viva La Vida by Coldplay is a great example. This progression starts on the IV chord as opposed to the I. 1
“Payola is the payment of cash or gifts in exchange for airplay.” “Payola” is a contraction of the words “pay” and”Victrola” (LP record player), and entered the English language via the record business. The first court case involving payola was in 1960” (Payola, 2018). Records began to replace live performance as the main way
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to hear—and sell—music. And labels recognized that popular disc jockeys could influence sales.Fingers pointed and words flew over payola, but it wasn’t until the TV quiz show scandals of 1958 (most famously, the show Twenty-One was found to be fixed) that the government got seriously involved. Once the “Do you now or have you ever …?” questions began, the jig was up.With the threat of losing their licenses, some radio stations took the precaution of firing disc jockeys who might put them at risk. In November 1959, in closed and open sessions before the U.S. House Oversight Committee, 335 disc jockeys from around the country admitted to having received over $263,000 in “consulting fees.” Freed went down in 1960, and Congress amended the Federal Communications Act to outlaw “under-the-table payments and require broadcasters to disclose if airplay for a song has been purchased.” Payola became a misdemeanor, with a penalty of up to $10,000 in fines and one year in prison (Hutchinson, 2015).
Most Well-Known Disc Jockeys
First you might ask what is a Disc Jockey? The Disc Jockeys were individuals who controlled the airwaves by picking the musical rotation and they had immense amounts of power because of it. “Every time a label had a record that really needed to be pushed, it entered into a devil’s bargain with the disc jockeys”(Kelly, 2016). The two Disc Jockey’s below were both publicly connected to the Payola Scandal in 1959.
Dick Clark
During the 1950s, Dick Clark also began investing in the music publishing and recording business. His business interests grew to include record companies, song publishing houses, and artist
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management groups. When the record industry’s “payola” scandal (involving payment in return for airplay) broke in 1959, Clark told a congressional committee he was unaware performers in whom he had interests had received disproportionate play on his programs. He sold his shares back to the corporation, upon ABC’s suggestion that his participation might be considered a conflict of interest (Dick Clark Biography, 2017).
Alan Freed
Freed was accused of having taken such payments, a charge that he denied. Throughout the ensuing witch hunt, Freed steadfastly
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maintained that he never played a record he didn’t like. Nonetheless, he was blackballed within the business (“Alan Freed”, 2018).
Payola Today
Unfortunately, as long as there has been a music industry, there have been attempts — both overt and clandestine — to manufacture hits. You can look as far back as the early 20th century, when musicians known as “song pluggers” were paid to promote sheet music. Today, large media companies own most major-market radio stations. Payola investigations in the mid-2000s led to multimillion-dollar settlements by several major label conglomerates, as well as four of the nation’s largest radio station owners (McCabe, 2017). One of the most popular ways to listen to music now is not only radio, but listening to media streamed online.
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These streaming applications include popular playlists and the top hits which demonstrate another form of payola. One example of this would be the application called Spotify. To better monetize their free tier, Spotify is testing their new ‘Sponsored Songs’ feature. The move will allow brands to put their ads in popular playlists, which sounds fine. But it’ll also allow labels to promote individual songs, a move that introduces some tricky payola issues (Sanchez, 2017). I believe payola to be bad thing. Payola technically decides which artists and what music will succeed or fail. The listeners may not hear the great music that comes from those who cannot afford to promote their music like others can. The overall idea of payola hurts the music businesses morals and honesty.
The practice of payola has had a significant impact on the history of popular American music and remains to be prevalent in the modern music industry. Payola was the practice of recording companies bribing a person of power at a music broadcasting platform to play their songs on the radio. When the term “payola” was coined by Vanity Fair in 1938, the practice had yet to boom and ultimately implode (Shinn, 2012).
Disc Jockeys: The Kings of Radio
In the 1950s, radio station disc jockeys, more commonly known as “DJs” today, became people of power as they solely controlled which songs were played on the radio. This ultimately gave them the power to decide which songs would become popular as radio exposure was, and remains to be, the biggest determining factor for which songs climb high on the charts. The two most powerful disc jockeys during the time of payola were Alan Freed and Dick Clark. Every recording agency competed for the attention of Freed and Clark, showering them with large sums of money, song royalties, and other lavish items (Shinn, 2012). Letting fate decide whether or not a song got played on the radio was too big of a risk that recording companies were not willing to take. Payola became such a prevalent practice that it was no longer a matter of extra exposure, but a matter of any exposure at all. Money had to be put into radio bribes in order for Record companies to expect a spot on the charts and profits.
Dick ClarkAlan Freed
The Rise of Payola:
Prior to 1940, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) was the sole monopoly in the music recording industry. ASCAP’s reign ended, however, when a competing recording company, Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) entered the industry in the 1940s. BMI recorded songs outside of the popular genres that ASCAP recorded and radios played. For this reason, BMI had to pay disc jockeys to play their music, beginning the payola battle. With so much airtime being bought by BMI, ASCAP began to struggle to get their songs played on air. Payola wasn’t openly discussed within the industry, but it also wasn’t a secret. This, however, changed when ASCAP got fed up with BMI buying all of the radio airtime and decided to air the industry’s dirty laundry (Schinn, 2012).
The word ASCAP spread about payola only partly contributed to the exposure of this practice. When a couple popular game shows in the 1950s were revealed to be rigged, investigations were carried out and suspicions were raised regarding the media industry as a whole. This led to Congress taking the payola rumors seriously and starting a formal investigation into the matter (Neira, n.d.).
The Investigation:
Alan Freed was asked to sign an affidavit saying he never accepted payola and was fired when he refused to do so (Fong-Torres, n.d.). Freed and several other disk jockeys, including the famous, Dick Clark had to testify in front of this investigation’s subcommittee. After the resolution of the investigation, Freed’s career was ruined while Clark managed to make it out unscathed.
The Result:
In 1960, Congress enacted legislation to contain payola in the Federal Communications Act of 1960. This act stated that if some form of payment was received in place of airing a song on the radio, the payment had to be disclosed to the public on air (Schinn, 2012). One of the main issues Congress had with payola was the fact the public was being misled about how and why songs made it onto the radio (History.com, 2009). This legislation protected the public from ignorance and made payola more difficult to practice. Payola wasn’t outlawed, but more so re-organized to avoid disrespecting the public’s trust.
Modern Payola
Despite legislation, payola still exists today, but in different forms. In this day and age, streaming services have taken over the music world. Radio is still prevalent and influential in pop culture, but streaming services have become a very popular form of listening to music. It has now become detrimental for recording agencies to have their songs played on these services like Spotify and Apple Music, which has caused the payola practice to migrate into the streaming world (Peoples, 2015).
To get a song on a streaming playlist can cost between $2000 and $10000 depending on the number of followers that playlist has. Getting a song on a highly followed playlist can quickly make a song go viral and further getting it played on the radio because of its popularity (Peoples, 2015).
After researching the practice of payola, I have mixed feelings about whether or not it is a serious issue. I sympathize greatly with the independent artists and small, start-up recording companies who can’t compete with the large recording companies deep pockets a, therefore, have trouble reaching success. Even though payola exists in modern streaming services, there are also modern opportunities for independent artists that did not exist before. Apple Music, for example, has created a helpful platform for independent artists to reach success. This does not eliminate the problem of payola, but it at least balances it out.
Regarding the public, I do believe it is unfair for hit lists on the radio and streaming services to be manufactured by payola rather than the actual merit of a song. This misleads listeners and takes away their part in influencing pop culture.
Work Cited:
Fairchild, Charles. “Alan Freed Still Casts a Long Shadow: The Persistence of Payola and The Ambiguous Value of Music.” 34, no. 3 (2012): 328-342. Assessed July 16th, 2018. https://doi-org.cyber.usask.ca/10.1177/0163443711433667
Fong-Torres, Ben. “Biography | Alan Freed.com. ” Alan Freed. Accessed July 17, 2018. http://www.alanfreed.com/wp/biography/.
Messitte, Nick. “How Payola Laws Keep Independent Artists Off Mainstream Radio .” Forbes. November 30, 2014. Accessed July 16, 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmessitte/2014/11/30/how-payola-laws-keep-independent-artists-off-mainstream-radio/#25c6ddd8519f.
Neira, Bob. “Payola Scandal Rocks 50’s Radio.” Modesto Radio Museum. Accessed July 17, 2018. http://www.modestoradiomuseum.org/payola.html.
Peoples, Glenn. “How ‘Playola’ Is Infiltrating Streaming Services: Pay for Play Is ‘Definitely Happening’.” Billboard. August 20, 2015. Accessed July 16, 2018. https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6670475/playola-promotion-streaming-services.
Alan Freed was asked to sign an 