www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/25/business/payola.php

Hardly more than a year has passed since the biggest U.S. record labels started agreeing to measures that were intended to end the industry's long history of employing bribes and other shady practices to influence the selection of songs played on the radio.

But it has become increasingly clear that the industry is still grappling with how to change its culture. In the past two weeks, songs from two record labels - both distributed through Vivendi's Universal Music Group - got a lift on the charts after a radio chain was paid to play the tunes as part of commercials late at night in an advertising program that New York State officials say is used to trick radio programmers.

The ad purchases came five months after Universal settled accusations that it had bribed radio programmers with gifts in exchange for airplay and engaged in other "deceptive" practices. The accord, in which Universal agreed to pay $12 million to New York charities, was the biggest so far in a sweeping investigation of the music industry that has been led by Eliot Spitzer, the New York attorney general.

In the settlement - which extends to any label or other entity whose practices are "directed or controlled" by Universal - executives are prohibited from, among other things, buying advertisements for the purpose of misleading the independent services that compile airplay data for Billboard and other publications. If Universal purchases a commercial containing more than 60 seconds of song - potentially enough for a tracking service to count it as regular airplay - the company must provide written notice of the ad.

Last week, Blackground Records, a label distributed by Universal, purchased ads that enabled the song, "Too Little, Too Late" by the teenage singer JoJo to climb to the No. 2 position on the U.S. mainstream pop radio chart. Before that, a representative for Nickelback, a rock band on Roadrunner Records, also distributed by Universal, paid for ads that inflated the performance of the song "Far Away." The tune ranked as the No. 1 song that week.

Universal said in a statement that it had no ownership interest in Blackground and no management control in Roadrunner. "We're investigating these allegations, but the decisions for these two acts were made by these two companies, outside of our control," it said.

How Spitzer's office responds now will determine how much weight the industry's settlements carry.

"Radio promotion executives are still under enormous pressure to use tools that maximize radio airplay because airplay still sells recordings," said Rachel Stilwell, a lawyer who worked several years ago on promotion for Verve Music Group, a Universal subsidiary label.

"Old habits die hard," Stilwell said.