When executives at Sony BMG in the United States needed to drum up support in 2002 for Jennifer Lopez's album This is Me ... Then, they called the program director of a San Diego radio station and offered her a 32-inch plasma TV in exchange for adding the artist's songs to her play list.

Sony BMG Music Entertainment knew such payola, or ``pay-for-play,'' was illegal. Nonetheless, the company asked the programmer to provide a fictitious contest winner's name and Social Security number to cover up her involvement.

The station executive got her TV, and J-Lo got her spins.

The alleged exchange was disclosed in a treasure trove of e-mails, Blackberry messages and other documents made public by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. That electronic paper trail led the second-largest music company to a US$10 million (HK$78 million) settlement.

Spitzer said Sony BMG executives offered ``outright bribes'' to radio programmers to make sure the company's artists got heard. Among the goodies Sony BMG gave employees of stations owned by Infinity Broadcasting, Clear Channel Communications and others: airline tickets, cash, vacation packages, PlayStation video game systems, DVD players and laptop computers.

In one e-mail that Spitzer released, a station manager who allegedly accepted gifts joked to Sony BMG executives: ``I'm a whore this week. What can I say?''

Sony BMG, home to such artists as Tony Bennett and the Dixie Chicks, promised to stop paying radio stations in exchange for airplay. The company issued a formal statement acknowledging that ``various employees pursued some radio promotion practices on behalf of the company that were wrong and improper.'' The company also fired an executive vice president of promotions at one of its labels.

Radio airplay is considered the most powerful promotional tool for record companies. Payola has plagued the music industry since the 1930s, with disc jockeys accepting cash, drugs and prostitutes in exchange for airplay.

At a news conference in his Lower Manhattan office, Spitzer said payola today was as widespread and ``corrosive'' as it was in the 1950s.

``It is driving the industry. It reaches to the very top of the industry on the radio side and on the label side.''

In 1960, Congress passed an anti-payola law banning broadcasters from taking cash or anything of value in exchange for playing specific songs unless they disclosed the transaction to listeners. Some states followed suit.

Spitzer's investigation continues at the other three major record companies - Universal Music, EMI and Warner Music - as well as at the United States' largest radio corporations.

Documents released as part of the Sony BMG settlement depicted the seamier side of the music business, in which under-the-table payments and nudge-and-wink deals were so common that no one even tried to hide them.

``What do I have to do to get Audioslave on WKSS this week?!!?'' a Sony BMG employee promoting the Audioslave song Like a Stone wrote to a Clear Channel programmer in 2003. ``Whatever you can dream up, I can make it happen!!!''

Documents show that through its labels, which include Epic Records, Columbia Records and Sony Urban, Sony BMG routinely financed on-air contests in which stations gave away vacation packages, concert tickets and other items. In exchange, the company - whose involvement was never revealed to listeners - demanded not just spins of particular songs but airplay during the hours when the most people were listening.

If they did not get it, executives didn't mince words. ``OK, here it is in black and white,'' one frustrated Epic promotion employee wrote to a colleague after giving Las Vegas ``flyaways'' - airline travel packages - to radio stations in exchange for playing Celine Dion's I Drove All Night. If the stations played the song only late at night, the employee wrote, ``They are not getting the flyaway.''

The e-mail also warned that programmers risked forfeiting the opportunity to play blackjack with Dion, who is based in Las Vegas. According to Spitzer's office, Sony BMG also expended ``significant resources'' to manipulate call-in request lines, paying interns and others to repeatedly phone stations posing as listeners.

To make sure the callers sounded authentic, Sony BMG employees issued specific guidelines. ``You need to rotate your people,'' an Epic promotion employee wrote last year in an e-mail to a call-in campaign leader. ``My guys on the inside say that it's the same couple of girls calling in every week and that they are not inspired enough to be put on the air. They've got to be excited...''

Spitzer took his sharpest aim at radio stations, saying they ``are the ones most fundamentally who are violating the public trust.''