PAYDAY

In your March 29 Pop Eye item “Label Pays Real Money for ‘Counterfeit’ Airing,” the statement “this is believed to be the first instance of a paid-for song being played alongside other songs on the regular playlist” would lead readers to believe that tracks played on commercial radio are chosen on merit alone.

What the article fails to address is the fact that along with the “promotional tie-ins” Limp Bizkit manager Jeff Kwatinetz mentions, in the allegedly payola-free ‘90s record companies pay copious sums of money to independent radio promotion companies, some of the same companies that act as consultants to radio stations, for the chance to be one of the not-”paid-for” songs on the regular playlist.

All Limp Bizkit’s manager did was cut out the middlemen--i.e., radio programmers and their consultants.

JONATHAN ROSNER

Los Angeles