Until the Associated Press and swing state vote counters decide otherwise, I hereby claim that ERIC B is president, as determined by the one-man electoral college known as RAKIM... Here's the Los Angeles Times defining payola in 1990: "to exchange money or other inducements for broadcasting a specific record if the payment is not publicly disclosed." In that sense, which is the US criminal sense, SPOTIFY can't be accused of soliciting payola with its new DISCOVERY MODE program. Spotify isn't a broadcaster and is disclosing what it's doing. But Discovery Mode, in which artists can ask Spotify to play specific songs in automated feeds in exchange for the inducement of a lower loyalty rate, is a form of pay-to-play—legal but problematic—by any reasonable definition. (It's also, as others have noted, a good example of rent-seeking). The idea sounds artist-friendly on the surface: Artists and labels can tell the service which songs they want highlighted when Spotify auto-plays their music in users' feeds, instead of leaving it up to the service's algorithms. Plays aren't guaranteed, but the artist/label's wishes basically become part of the algorithm. This may not always lead to the best experience for users, who generally are better served by selecter/curators than by label promotion departments, but we also want, and expect, curators to be listening to creators. What we don't want is for curators to be charging for that service. Every artist learns this on day one of artist school: If you have to pay to get in the door, find another door or run the other way. Spotify has made a point of noting there's no upfront cost associated with Discovery Mode; artists or labels just have to agree to the reduced royalty for any streams that result from the placement. "There's no barrier to entry," Spotify's CHARLETON LAMB tells Music Business Worldwide. But there is a cost, which is why Lamb also talks about the potential "positive ROI" from increased streams making up for the decreased royalties. And there are inevitable questions. How are other artists to know Spotify's algorithms aren't overlooking them completely if they choose not to participate in the program? (A classic flipside of payola is that while labels get rewarded for paying up, others can be punished for not doing so.) What's to prevent an optional reduced royalty from thereby becoming a mandatory one? What's to stop Spotify from eventually applying it to other corners of the service, beyond automatic feeds? Will labels be able to buy their way onto Spotify's most popular playlists? Onto users' home pages? MIDIA's MARK MULLIGAN makes a good argument for why Spotify might need to appease its investors more than artists or users at this point, meaning anything that lowers the service's costs is a net positive. But at a moment when artists are screaming, increasingly loudly, for better payouts, an initiative that does the opposite comes with obvious risks, which may dent Spotify's own return on this particular investment in unexpected ways... The GRAMMY AWARDS' World Music Album category, which ANGÉLIQUE KIDJO won this year for a third time, is getting a new name: Global Music Album. The change, says the RECORDING ACADEMY, "symbolizes a departure from the connotations of colonialism, folk, and 'non-American.'" Amen—with an asterisk. "World," widely used in the industry as code for music that doesn't originate in a handful of English-speaking countries, has never been a good name and won't be missed. But what makes "global" different? And is the categorization itself being revisited or just the name?... Composer LOULA YORKE and turntablist NIKNAK are the top winners of this year's ORAM AWARDS, for achievements in music and sound by women and gender-minority artists... Arguably the most musically relevant result of Election Day: DRAKEO THE RULER is free... RIP MATEO LAFONTAINE, BARON WOLMAN, CHERYL TIANO and JOHNNY MEADOWS.