While sweating and standing around at a Bug Jar concert last night, I had ample time from some bitter reflection over the recent payola announcement. The first payments from the Sony settlement have gone out, and you'd think that Sony's classical and jazz divisions had been stuffing Benjamins into the pockets of Simon Pontin and Mordecai Lipshutz .
Unfortunately for Simon and Mordecai, Sony wasn't handing out trips and cash to get the newest recording of Beethoven's Late Quartets played on public radio. Instead, they were paying to get new Franz Ferdinand, Killer Mike, Train and Celine Dion songs on Clear Channel and Infinity (this giant pdf has all the details). And it wasn't WXXI listeners who were harmed: it was indy artists who compete with the big names, and fans who buy records in popular genres. Payola subjects artists to unfair, subsidized competition, and fans pay more for all CDs to finance this form of bribery.
Yet the process set up to distribute the payola penalty didn't benefit the affected fans or artists. Instead, in Rochester, the money went to places like the Rochester Philharmonic, Little Theatre, Strong Museum and Southeast Area Coalition. Only the latter can plausibly claim to represent some of the fans who were harmed. Here's what the others are doing:
- Strong is going to support "a series of residencies by the Ying Quartet, the Counter Induction ensemble and the Corigiliano Quartet, which specialize in contemporary music performance, as well as outreach efforts to underserved populations". (That's bullshit, btw: the teeny-tiny population that wants to hear contemporary music performance is overserved, if anything.)
- The RPO is going to put its money into "Symphony 101", an outreach program.
- The Little is getting money to support jazz performance in the cafe.
Draw your own own conclusions from the statewide list, but my take is that the vast majority of the money is going to support symphonies and jazz, neither of which were harmed by payola. The reason is that the grant-writing funding process used to distribute payoffs is tilted towards the existing non-profits that already suck down a disproportionate share of money spent on "culture".
These organizations, which have large bureaucracies devoted mainly to self-perpetuation, are well-funded by corporate, private and government benefactors. They are safe havens for money from the risk-averse. Donors to these organizations feel no fear in funding yet another performance of Mozart's 23rd piano concerto, or for commissioning a symphony by an unknown composer which will be played once and swiftly forgotten. If you've ever attended an event at one of these organizations, you've seen how carefully the acknowledgment of benefactors is managed -- it is an art that rivals or surpasses the musicianship on display. In Rochester, over 40 of these music groups successfully receive funding.
The classical music and jazz constituency in Rochester is extremely well-served, which is great. But these aren't the people who were harmed by payola. Those folks can be found in dumps like the Bug Jar and Water Street. And, compared to the money and attention lavished on the tiny population of jazz listeners and symphony-goers, this larger and more diverse group is woefully underserved.
I don't mean to pick on places like the Bug Jar, because there's a good reason it is a sweaty shithole. And it's a reason that only figures in the worst nightmares of symphony bureaucrats: the Bug Jar has to make its nut from admissions and drinks. That's hard work. It means that the place is small and crowded, that they can only book acts that will fill the place, and that the fans must be treated like cattle in addition to paying a good buck to get in and have a beer.
The artists who appear at the Bug Jar, like Jens Lekman last night, are generally indy acts booked by tiny labels. They're the first set of victims of payola. The fans who come to see acts like Jens are the second. The payola payout could have gone to finance a few more indy concerts to help those acts. If the concerts were free, that would have been payback for the fans.
Instead, the payola money morphed into a transfer payment from those underserved fans and artists to a much smaller yet better-served population of jazz and symphony attendees. They've never heard of Good Charlotte, but some of GC's promotion money will help pay for their night of entertainment.
