Do you believe that radio payola helps or hinders the effect of a song?

The most recent example is Mariah Carey's new song "#Beautiful", down 10.360 million audience impressions on Pop Radio. A similar situation happened with Madonna in early 2012 when "Give Me All Your Luvin'" dropped 8.954 million audience impressions on Pop Radio.

Each of these are two high profile Divas yet they have to strike a deal for radio to play there songs.

With Mariah Carey's "#Beautiful" when it started to plunge on audience impressions on Pop Radio, it sat (and currently sits as of this post) at #14, while Madonna's "Give Me All Your Luvin'" was perched at #6 on iTunes. Madonna's also peaked at 39.788 million audience impressions on Pop Radio during it's first week. The fate of "#Beautiful" is still up in the air.

Now, I'm only using these two high profile usages of payola, but don't get it twisted, others have used it & typically the song seems to be affected by it in a bad way.

The question remains: does PAYOLA help or hinder a song, especially as it relates to longevity, popularity & chart success?

Discuss!

http://kworb.net/radio/pop/archives/2012/20120212.html

What is Payola?

It only helps when radio would've barely even touched your song. It did help Madonna because radio would've not played it otherwise.

I guess it varies song to song... It's hard to keep up after payola I think if the single isn't bound to smash so it could be quite dangerous but at the same time it gives an advantage to the ones that wouldn't, so.

what kind of Rihanna fan are you?

When record companies pay radio stations to play a certain song.

I'm not here for Mariah Carey, I haven't even heard the song on my radio

True.

Songs that wouldn't even be touched by radio benefit. But I believe that if a song is meant to smash, it will smash. Payola seems to wear out the song too quickly so it doesn't get to enjoy it's full life cycle...