Everybody wants to get famous. Or so they say. Fact is, for many emerging artists these days there’s a direct correlation between fame and the number of streams your tracks have on Spotify. As with anything online though, streaming figures can be manipulated. So over the next two weeks we’re going to tell you all about the phenomenon of playola, why it exists, how it works and the ways it has changed the music business. The story of playola goes back to the days of payola, whereby record labels and/or artists would pay DJs heaps of money to play their tracks on their radio shows. In this week’s episode, we delve into the history of payola for two reasons, really: It’s actually still a thing that happens, despite the fact that radio is more or less irrelevant for younger generations of people. Playola is an evolution of payola, using similar tactics to make artists seem popular, but via streams rather than radio. So this week, in part one, we’re giving you the context for a wider discussion on streaming manipulation by showing that it is payola by another name. We hope you enjoy this investigative podcast episode. We don’t often do journalism, but we sure do find it satisfying when we do.