http://www.billboard.com/articles/bu...aming-services
Labels are incorporating playlist *promotion into their overall marketing strategies with the knowledge that discovery through a list favored by, say, music supervisors can lead to synch licenses for a new artist. Radio stations also often use streaming data to inform their own spin cycles, with the rock and pop formats in particular looking to "see what's bubbling up and amplify it," says one digital music executive. “Stations don’t want to be behind what’s online.”
sources tell Billboard that Frank’s company is
among those that have adopted some of radio promotion’s *unsavory *practices, such as paying for placement on playlists, if not buying and thus controlling them outright.
Multiple insiders allege that the major music groups -- as well as DigMark and a playlist promoter --
have paid influential curators to populate their playlists with their clients’ music. Some third-party users are known to request money to include songs on their playlists.
Pay for play “is definitely *happening,” claims a major-label marketing executive, one of several who say that popular playlists can and have been bought
According to a source, the price can range from $2,000 for a playlist with tens of thousands of fans to $10,000 for the more well-followed playlists.
Indeed, spots on many of the largest Spotify playlists are already controlled by the three major music companies, which each own a branded property that curates playlists of many styles and genres.