NEW YORK (AFP) - New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, the scourge of Wall Street wrongdoers, has turned his crusading eye on the music industry and the sometimes murky relationship between record labels and radio stations.
The EMI Group confirmed Friday that it, along with other music companies, had received a request from Spitzer's office for information regarding the promotion of records on New York state radio stations.
"EMI has a long-standing, strict, written policy prohibiting unlawful radio promotion practices, and that policy was reaffirmed internally earlier this year," the label said in a statement released to the London Stock Exchange.
"EMI has no reason to believe that there will be any material financial impact on the company," it added.
EMI was named in a New York Times report on Friday, along with French media group Vivendi Universal, Warner Music Group and Sony BMG Music Entertainment, as having been subpoenaed by Spitzer's office.
The Times said the subpoenas sought copies of contracts, billing records and other information detailing the labels' ties to middlemen who pitch new records to radio programmers.
Spitzer's office declined to comment Friday, as did Vivendi, Universal and Sony.
Broadcasters are banned from taking cash or goods in return for playing songs, but the money labels pay to the middlemen has been seen as a method of circumventing that regulation.
The promoters pay radio stations an annual fee, which they say is for advance copies of play lists, and not for playing a certain song.
The allegation is that the system is unfairly weighted against artists who cannot afford to employ their own middlemen.
10/22/2004 - 16:46 GMT - AFP