payola op-ed

An op-ed article from the drummer from Semisonic (every new beginning starts from some other beginning's end...) giving an interesting account of how payola screws over artists:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/29/opinion/29slichter.html

The short of it: artists have to recoup the money spent on payola through album sales. Maybe that's why MC Hammer and Toni Braxton went bankrupt?