Cyrus' concerns are being looked at by staff counsel for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which Tauzin chairs, according to Tauzin spokesman Ken Johnson. The practice, Johnson says, has "raised a lot of eyebrows. I'm a former broadcaster and I had no idea how really mercenary [indie promotion] has become."

Inside the industry, where indie promotion remains a taboo topic and is rarely discussed on the record, some wonder how the current system, which revolves around federally licensed airwaves, has avoided close regulatory examination.

"The Justice Department has never really stuck its nose in this far enough," complains one artist manager, a 30-year industry veteran. "Damn it, if I have to pay off [indies] in order to promote my record, that's restraint of trade."

A veteran of the promotion business agrees: "I don't know what exactly will trip the [Department of Justice's] trigger if it hasn't already been tripped. There are certainly enough smatterings of improprieties in this ordeal. If an investigation happened, we could once and for all put this whole thing to rest, and the industry would be better for it.

"Instead, it's 'Hey, everybody's doing it.'"

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The Federal Communications Commission has jurisdiction over any payola complaints; it would pass along matters to the Department of Justice if enforcement is needed. But the FCC acts only if a formal complaint is filed that someone at a station is receiving illegal payments.

Since the new pay-for-play payola has become a profitable part of the day-to-day business at nearly every pop music station in America, who's going to complain?

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Here's how the lucrative, back-scratching system works:

Record companies need radio to play their artists, but legally they're prohibited from paying stations directly. (Technically, payola laws bar only nondisclosed payments, but for obvious reasons, neither record companies nor radio stations want on-air announcements that the airtime is being bought.)

So the companies employ middlemen, the indies. In this age of consolidation, disc jockeys and increasingly even local program directors have little input over playlists; that comes from above. The indies form alliances with a station's general managers (or the corporate owners) and cut deals, typically guaranteeing a station in a medium-sized market $75,000 to $100,000 annually in what is termed "promotional support" to buy a station van, T-shirts, billboard ads, etc.

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