Pitchfork

New York's College Music Journal, considered the gospel for the past two decades on what's being played on college radio stations around the country, has admitted to distorting the weekly college radio station playlists it publishes. Several station programmers have noticed in past months that CMJ has omitted albums which the stations had reported playing, and replaced them with their own compilation album, Certain Damage. That compilation is a promotional CD that CMJ produces and distributes to radio stations and record stores, intended for on-air and in-store play. The company charges $3,000 per track to record labels who aim to have their artists' songs included. Quite clearly, CMJ has a very vested interest in assuring that its own compilation gets airplay: Last year the company released six different volumes of Certain Damage, containing a total of more than 125 tracks, which would have garnered over $250,000 in revenue.

CMJ publisher Robert Haber, in a statement to the New York Post, said that the journal only inserted its own compilation album into the playlists of radio stations if it "could not verify the existence of an album reported" by that station, terming these substitutions "placeholders." In a letter that he wrote to the more than 1,200 college radio outlets which pay CMJ to have their playlists included in the company's New Music Report, Haber said, "As to the allegations that there was some sinister motive behind this utilizing Certain Damage as a placeholder let me say-- and I cannot be any more emphatic about this-- that was not done to promote, or benefit in any way, Certain Damage" Haber went on to say that the practice will be halted immediately: "Please know that CMJ is only interested in having our radio airplay charts be 100 percent accurate, every single week."