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NEW YORK, July 25 -- Sony BMG Music Entertainment admitted that its employees lavished cash, trips and other bribes on radio stations and their employees to get its music on the air in a settlement that is part of a wider investigation by New York Attorney General Eliot L. Spitzer into payola in the music industry.

At a news conference Monday, Spitzer said payola was "pervasive" in the industry and -- while it had assumed more sophisticated forms lately -- does not much differ from practices unearthed in scandals that have dogged the industry since the early days of radio.



New York State Attorney General Eliot L. Spitzer unveils incriminating e-mails in the music industry, in which he says payola is pervasive. As part of a settlement with Sony BMG, Spitzer unveiled yet another string of incriminating e-mails, this time from record-company executives, echoing similarly compromising e-mails from previous investigations he led of the brokerage, insurance and mutual fund industries.

In an e-mail last September, for instance, an unidentified Sony BMG executive complains that the company was paying too much in trips and gifts to the program director of Buffalo's WKSE-FM in return for airtime for the Sony BMG rock band Franz Ferdinand.

"Two weeks ago, it cost us over 4,000 to get Franz on WKSE," the e-mail said. "That is what the four trips to Miami and hotel cost."

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Spitzer also called on the Federal Communications Commission to take a "very hard look" at the major radio-station owners and consider stripping the companies of broadcast licenses in cases where they are found to have "violated a public trust."

Clear Channel Communications Inc., based in San Antonio, and Infinity Broadcasting Corp. have disclosed receiving subpoenas as part of the Spitzer probe. A Clear Channel representative could not be reached. A spokesman for Infinity, a unit of New York's Viacom Inc., declined to comment.