My most recent column in The Post, on why payola in the music business is just fine:

Maybe Attorney General Eliot Spitzer should simply pay radio stations to mention his name on a daily basis as he gets ready to run for governor. That way, at least, we’d all be spared wastes of time and money like his recent investigation into music-industry payola.

On Monday, Spitzer’s office announced one of its famous “settlements” with Sony BMG. After months of taxpayer-funded investigation, Spitzer got Sony to admit to bribing radio stations to play its artists: $1,000 to get a J. Lo track added to a playlist in Buffalo, $750 to get more Beyoncé and Train on the air in South Burlington, Vt., a digital camera for this DJ, a laptop for that program director — and on and on.

The company agreed to pay a $10 million fine, and it promised (not incidentally) to stop bribing people.

And, so, now we know . . . what exactly? That all those Celine Dion, J. Lo and Audioslave songs on the radio aren’t actually the most meritorious music out there?

That radio isn’t a juried art exhibition, with critics picking winners and losers based on artistic merit and moral integrity?

Thanks a lot, Eliot.

For robbing millions of New Yorkers of their child-like innocence.

Of course music companies pay for play. And, yes, it is illegal.

But the real question New Yorkers should be asking themselves is whether any of what Sony did is actually wrong or harmful to consumers.

Payola is as old as recorded music itself.

In fact, it’s older.

…

Spitzer should concentrate on more important things. Meanwhile, let a thousand flowers bloom. And let them bid for their places in the sun.

It was also payola day at the Times, with this op-ed and this one, too.