Well. Well. Well. What are we to make of this text from an indie radio promoter to an employee of a Hot AC radio station: "Please put RUA into 50 spin rotation. Just for 6 weeks. I can use the billing... Mostly nights and overnights of course... This is how I will get the bills paid until we make money." Or, conversely, this one: "Please don't let INTERSCOPE dictate anything to you. They don't pay me s***." Those messages between indie promoter STEVE ZAP and labels who hired him and radio stations he was pitching on their behalf to either play or *not* play certain songs are among 2,500 texts obtained by ROLLING STONE, which presents them as pretty good evidence that payola, to quote the magazine's carefully worded headline, "May Still Be Thriving." Zap, a 24-year-veteran of music promotion, tells Rolling Stone's ELIAS LEIGHT that his work in promoting songs to radio programmers is "always within legal bounds" and any "allegations that I purchased airplay through quid pro quo agreements would be reckless and extremely damaging." Quid pro quo arrangements would mean the illegal act of paying radio stations, either in cash or in prizes and other promotional support, to add songs to their rotation. Zap tells Rolling Stone he does ask stations to add songs—that's literally a radio promoter's job—and sometimes provides them with "certain promotional support," and says there's nothing wrong with either of those activities as long as they're not directly linked to each other. Which is an accurate reading of the law, though it will be up to you—and perhaps the major labels, two of whom say they absolutely would not tolerate such behavior and one which says it's investigating—to decide if it's an accurate reading of Zap's day-to-day work and/or the day-to-day work of his peers in the indie promo business. Leight, who's been on the payola beat for a while, has done a great job in the past of demonstrating that the unsavory art of paying for radio play has never quite disappeared. That's the context here: Payola is as old as the music business, though its exact form and its exact relation to state and federal laws has morphed over time. What its existence tells you about the credibility of the people and entities programming any number of radio stations has, quite possibly, not morphed at all. The new texts, all from the past two years, show Zap asking programmers not only which artists to play more but also which ones to play less, and sometimes trying to dictate *when* to play them. "After 8 pm," he requests one station on behalf of SHAWN MENDES' "IF I CAN'T HAVE YOU." "Can we do every 15 min. No one will even notice. No one listens to the radio unless in car." There's no evidence in the texts, according to Leight, that any of the artists were involved in any of this. As for the radio stations—none of whom he identifies—who's listening to these pitches? Even if the asks are legal and by the books, is that how you want your local Hot AC or hip-hop or pop station to decide the next song, coming up right after these six messages? Are those six messages not paying the station enough money? Does the station even care what that next song is?... MACHINE GUN KELLY's TICKETS TO MY DOWNFALL, which you might describe as a SOUNDCLOUD-y take on pop-punk, is the first rock album to top the BILLBOARD 200 in over a year—unless you want to count the singer-songwriter album it replaced, TAYLOR SWIFT's FOLKLORE, which I sometimes do... (And, hey, guess who else has a weekly albums chart now?)... The SUPREME COURT has declined to hear the final appeal in the STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN plagiarism case, which means the LED ZEPPELIN classic, which I always count as rock except sometimes when I think of it as folklore, is legally free and clear. It's a PAGE and PLANT song and that's that... Washington, DC's celebrated U STREET MUSIC HALL is closing, a victim of both the coronavirus and, owner WILL EASTMAN tells the Washington Post, "senseless litigation" with its landlord over the club's lease. But mostly the virus. The litigation was the club's underlying condition... JARED SMITH says he'll be stepping down soon as president of TICKETMASTER.