I watched the Arcade Fire concert streaming on youtube last night. Before the show they had some interviews with some of the band. One of them started singing a song (In the Air Tonight I believe) and he said I better stop or we will have to pay. Kind of funny, but I think the actual limit is like 2 lines. Pretty ridiculous.
Two lines is still enough to pay up. In the old days of radio, you could get plugs for a bunch of songs by playing a medley (the band leaders on radio would do this).
The labels would pay you even more to sing the refrain so that people could ID the songs.
And then ASCAP had the balls to challenge BMI over “payola” in radio. ASCAP “ran things” until after the war but even as this article notes, would not publish race/R&B records or hillbilly/country. When new music started to take over the charts, ASCAP alleged unfair competition.
PS Payola is still in radio.