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Independent Promotion: The Inside Story

Michael Goldberg, Rolling Stone, 24 April 1986

IT WAS GOING to be easy money. The cash would be sent, each week, in an unmarked brown paper envelope to the home of the radio station's program director. All he had to do was add certain records to his station's playlist — especially some of the records his contact, the independent record-promotion man, asked him to add. Every week he would be paid $500 per record added. "They said, 'Don't put it in the bank, don't tell your wife. Go out and buy yourself something nice'," the former program director, who didn't want his name used, told Rolling Stone. "When it was offered to me, I was told, 'Everybody does it. Your buddy down here does it and your friend over there. Everybody does it'."

Total word count of piece: 2974

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