EMI Names Names And Settles Payola Suit For $3.75M

UPDATED: EMI has settled it’s payola lawsuit with NY state.  The $3.75 million fine was the smallest paid by a major label, but the documents released were among the most detailed naming names at the label and radio. 

According to reports the EMI artists who have benefited from various schemes include the Rolling Stones, Coldplay, Norah Jones, The Baha Men and the Gorillaz.  The suit also named EMI  independent promoters who were hired by EMI to engage in questionable activity including Jeff McClusky, Bill McGathy and Michele Clark who had "exclusive arrangements" with particular radio stations.

Documents describe one indie promoter discussing with a Virgin executive how to hide a $400 cash payment that EMI had made to KSRH-FM in Northern California for airplay of songs by the band Gomez.  "What do you need the $400 invoice to say?" the promoter asked in an e-mail. "How ’bout $400 website promotion?" the Virgin executive replied, "I meant as long as they have a website, in case somebody checked."

Trading live concert performances at station events for airplay has been a practice all too familiar to anyone in the industry for decades. But Virgin/EMI took the practice one step further. One promo exec testified that radio stations "might say, ‘I’m thinking of adding your’ whatever this week. ‘Do you think you can take care of lighting for my show, production for my show, or T-shirts’ or something like that."

Now that Spitzer has settled with all four major label groups, his probe of radio and pending FCC investigations of both the labels and radio are next up.

MORE: Read the official court order discontinuing the case and outlining the settlement here and the exhibits and evidence filed by the Attorney Generals office which contain many of the incrementing emails here. And there’s more fun reading in the LA Times (here),The Velvet Rope, and FMQB.