Hot Topic: Is Payola A Necessary Evil?

For R&B acts, the road to commercial glory can oft be a tedious and impossible journey.

Truth be told, while Hip Hop purveyors can be sure to receive the full support of Urban radio upon the release of new material, the only R&B acts that can be guaranteed potent airplay on Top 40 and Urban formats today are the ladies pictured above- and the Rap firework that is Nicki Minaj.

In turn, now armed with audience impressions in the millions and the ear of the public in their arsenal, this trio stand as the only ‘Urban belles‘ who can be expected to shift major numbers on both a singles and album front.

On the other end of the scales comes R&B’s far less renowned acts, depending solely on Urban formats, digital press and television appearances to aid their releases…forcing the genre to the bottom of the totem pole led by Country and the aforementioned Hip Hop.

More below…

Billed as the ‘illegal practice of payment by record companies for the broadcast of recordings on music radio’, payola sees a label pay an outlet to spin a cut (or cuts) of their choice with the intention of using that outlet to reach as wide of an audience as possible.

Problematic, as it’s inherently unfair to labels who opt not to employ this method with their artist, or who simply can’t afford to.

However, speaking hypothetically, do you feel record labels would score more from R&B releases, if those releases were ‘pushed’ to compliant Pop outlets.

The kind of outlets, that boast around 4 million listeners a week and who’d give music lovers no choice but to pay attention to what the genre has to offer.

Weigh in below!