Is there anything scarier or spookier in music than the ever-present specter of payola? Anything creepier than shadowy record company promoters hiding behind masks while handing out candy to any programmer that crosses their path? Actually, there probably is, and my history books tell me plenty of people don't think there was ever anything wrong with it, but it's Oct. 31 and that particular costume is back in vogue, and plenty of people are wrong, so humor me. Recent news item: "Record labels can now pay SPOTIFY to promote artists on the platform, via pop-up 'Music For You' alerts." Thoughts/questions from music TWITTER: "I think this is called Payola." "Feels like (smart) contextual marketing." "Everything old is new again." "Digital endcaps." I have deep respect for each of these voices. As with so many shiny new digital things, we appear to be in a murky middle ground where no one is entirely sure what to call it, what the ethical considerations are and what those ethical considerations should be. Do streaming music users care if their recommendations come from human programmers, digital algorithms or record compny ad budgets? Should they care? Is a pop-up ad the same thing as a recommendation? Does the answer to that last question change if sometimes the pop-up is controlled by an independent editorial team and sometimes it's controlled by an ad buy? Do users have a right to know which entity is doing the recommending at any given time? (More from music Twitter, in this case the FUTURE OF MUSIC COALITION: "Amazingly, no disclosure requirements exist on digital services. We’ve told the FTC to look into this.") How thick is the line between programming and advertising these days? Is it getting thinner? Is a streaming service more like a record store, where every display spot is for sale and customers sort of know that even if no one is saying so out loud, or more like a radio station, where the only things that are supposed to be for sale are the ad spots, wink wink? Is it both at the same time? If it's OK to buy a pop-up recommendation, is it also OK to buy a spot on a playlist? Will labels one day be solicited to start paying for that, too? What will be lost when that happens? Do you trust POP RISING? Who put that COLDPLAY song on there and why? What's your Halloween costume this year? What are SONY, WARNER and UNIVERSAL's costumes? Or can't you quite tell? It is a little dark in here... Speaking of scary things, there are people trying to mess with the alphabet song... Ten songs that are scarier than "THRILLER" according to the PANDORA genome... Rock and roll ghosts... You think the authorship and ownership of LIZZO's "TRUTH HURTS" is complicated? Want about the rights around this little-known and all-but-unheard LOU REED–ANDY WARHOL joint, which one of the men may have wanted nothing to do with and the other, well, it's complicated... Does GOD hand out $68 million tax refunds?... "How streaming killed underground micro-labels" is a clickbait headline for an essay by a label owner who's quitting the biz but isn't even trying to accuse streaming services of murder. It is, however, an interesting take on how tiny labels do and don't fit in this spooky day and age... RIP Woody Guthrie biographer ED CRAY and "The Partridge Family" creator BERNARD SLADE.