Tech Review Sites and Payola

cheesecake23 writes "How often have you read a hardware review and thought: 'No way was that an honest opinion, the reviewer was bought'—? The Daily Tech has gone undercover to find out whether or not payola is accepted among the 35 largest online English-language hardware review sites. Questions asked and answered — Q: How many sites would take money (or sell ads) in exchange for a product review? A: 20 percent. Q: How many sites would additionally consider selling an Editor's Choice award? A: None. Q: Were any regions of the world more corrupt than others? A: No, it was 20-25% almost everywhere. Q: Does it depend on the size or age of the site? A: RTFA. Although no bad actors were explicitly unmasked, the article contains enough information to make a whitelist of quite a few good guys."

Re:"Immorality" of radio payola?

[Sangui5]

There are other reasons to consider payola immoral, but there is a straightforward reason: if the DJ's only spin songs they've been payed to play, the those who can't pay won't get paid.

Simply put, payola keeps small artists and those without the backing of a well-monied party at a distinct disadvantage. The major labels certainly form an oligopoly, and, cartel or not, they have maintained their oligopoly through 1) control of the distribution chain, 2) buying out the supply of new talent, and 3) through squeezing small players from the most effective publicity channels. #1 is threatened by the internet, and is their largest problem right now. #2 is the fault of bands stupidly signing disadvantageous contracts; to a mild extend newer bands are wising up, though. #3 is still an issue. Payola is the direct way of doing it, and gave the majors their initial dominance. Nowadays, it is a little more discreet; "independent promoters" get money from the majors, and then they in turn turn over "stuff" to radio stations (stuff ranging from blatant cash bribes to concert tickets to give away through on-air contests). Direct or not, payola floods playlists with songs from well-funded labels, at the expense of smaller labels or self-produced bands which do not have the resources to buy their way onto playlists.

There is an exception; a record label can straight out pay to get a song played, but the radio station has to disclaim that it is a pay-for-play, and the amount of airtime devoted to pay-for-play is limited by law (I believe it may be by considering such to be advertising; and radio stations are limited in the fraction of airtime which is advertising). This sort of payment is probably unproblematic from a legal and a moral standpoint, unless playlists are influenced by who is buying advertising (which would essentially be old-skool payola again).

Re:Give the names, you chickensh!t

[Aluvus]

DailyTech belongs to AnandTech. AnandTech doesn't want to destroy its relationships with other sites. Conversely, it's willing to shine a spotlight on some of the good guys (Tech Report) because that improves their relationship.

Gaming as opposed to Tech

[nick_davison]

Then the source showed me an invoice for the same game, this one from
IGN/Gamespy. What Gamespot calls a gumball, Gamespy calls, less charmingly, a "Gamespy Spotlight". But the content and the principle is basically the same: the Spotlights are those thumbnail screenshot links that you see on the site's front page. "What you're looking at on the front page is not what the editors decided is the best game," the media buyer informed me.

Source: kotaku.com [kotaku.com] - They actually have a whole section on ethics [kotaku.com] including one bribe [kotaku.com] that I'm sure is utterly reasonable.

Re:They only take it from known conspirators

[networkBoy]

"If consumers _really_ wanted unbiased reviews, then publications would do it the right way. Buy the product off the retailer's shelf and test. But that's expensive and no consumer is willing to pay for it."

You mean like consumer reports?

Or they're more subtle

[Moraelin]

Taking money can also be somewhat more subtle than "ok, it will cost you 30 silvers for a 95% score".

For example, in traditional printed media, advertising money was always a big set of shackles. The "if you don't give us 95% or more, we'll not advertise in your magazine" threat was around in various shapes for as long as there were reviews magazines, and some caved in big time.

I remember, for example, that back in the 80's some game magazines even let big publishers write their own shameless advertising as a review... and I only started to suspect something's fishy when one had given itself 115% score.

Others do it for the previews and free material to review. Being a review magazine or site puts one in a very tight spot, because you depend on having stuff to review and _preview_. No freebies to review, no reviews, no site. In a nutshell, it's the worst kind of conflict of interest: the same guys you're supposed to honestly review and grade, are the guys who control your air supply and can tighten the noose around your neck any time they stop liking you.

Even if you were rich and bought all the stuff to review (though that's a _lot_ of money), previews can still make or break your popularity. If you review games and you're the only site who has no clue what's EA's _next_ game gonna be like, you're fucked. If you're a hardware review site and are the only one who has no clue what nVidia is up to until the card actually hit the shelves (i.e., up to 6 months even after launch), you're just irrelevant.

And, yeah, both only work for big players. If Trident came and said "we'll only send you our next graphics card to review if you promise to make it look good", chances are you'd laugh them out of the office.

In fact, the side effect of being in the pocket of the big players, is that a lot of sites proceed to shaft the smaller players as some kind of "look, we can still give bad grades too!" proof. Some of the sites and magazines that caved in, at least then just shifted their whole band to the high end, and everyone equally gets grades between 90% and 100%, or between 4 and 5 stars. But I can think of some at least in the game reviews arena who figured out they still have a reputation to build, and proceeded to have to demolish some obscure or indie game regularly, to show that they can give low grades too. They're impartial like that. You better trust them that EA's review actually earned a 95% score, 'cause, look, they also gave some minor player a 15% this month!

So going at one of those pretending to be a minor player looking to buy a review, well, duh, of course won't work.

Re:Misuse of public resources?

[jimicus]

If Virgin records had a radio station

Erm... they do [virginradio.co.uk].

Re:Toms

[CmSpuD]

You can always just go to print.html on any of the Tom's Hardware articles, just add it to the end of the url on the first page.
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2007/06/04/wd_brings _250_gb_hdds_to_notebooks_uk/print.html [tomshardware.co.uk]

Try Maximum PC

[schwit1]

They will call junk 'junk'.

http://www.maximumpc.com/ [maximumpc.com]

Re:They only take it from known conspirators

[Comboman]

The only specs that are based on subscriber surveys are reliablity/repair history. Everything else is based on laboratory testing. More info here [consumerreports.org]. I suspect they are statistically sound, since you often see "insufficient responses" in the results for high-end items.

The biggest problem with their method (buying off the shelf rather than getting product from the manufacturer) is that by the time the testing is complete, you have a great deal of information on last year's model. Good for bargain hunters, but not for those who need to be on the bleeding edge (though I suppose those people don't really care what Consumer Reports says about the product they just have to have today).