The pay-to-play system (see also: payola) plagues all levels of the music industry, but it seems especially prevalent in hip-hop.

In an article published this morning in the Examiner , Tech N9ne discusses his antipathy toward the practice, saying, "The game has turned into not how good you are, but how much you can pay to get played. We might have $20,000, but we’re not going to give it to no DJ to play our song 700 times a week. We might want to put the $20,000 in more posters to give out hand-to-hand.”

Read the article here.

Further Reading
GO: Our 12/07 feature by Nadia Pflaum on how pay-to-play has affected some local rappers.
GO: Our review, by Dan LeRoy, of Tech N9ne's new album, Killer.