Salon has another article about the the current state of pay-for-play (or payola) between the record labels and the radio stations. The process is pretty simple, instead of labels directly giving money to radio stations (which is illegal), they hand it over to independent promoters. These promoters then pay radio stations to add songs to the playlist. Even if the program director added a song on his/her own doing, the label for that particular artist would still get an invoice. The labels are finally getting upset at this system and want to stop it. Obviously they aren't totally innocent because they allowed this to continue for so long and also go to great lengths to stop webcasters to give their artists free promotion. Here's a link to all of Salon's articles about Clear Channel. Also, Sarah sent in a link to CNN.com about the quality of modern radio. Finally, here's a link to Senator Russ Feingold statement regarding the deregulation of radio stations. Very informative.