One of DC’s top radio hosts and overall great guy, David Burd explained how payola works to me a while back when I asked about why so many of the same songs are played continuously on the same station. He explained that recording labels used to pay the stations to keep playing the same music. In our discussion we also talked about how this practice is not happening so much anymore.

My conversation with the “Burdman” took place a number of years ago – back in the days when I had more time and regularly contributed as a technology reporter for the station.

I was reminded of this conversation when I saw this article about how Eliot Spitzer is going after radio stations for taking payola in return for playing songs from artists such as Liz Phair.