Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web:

Billboard’s payola expose: Payola was once the scourge of the radio world, and Billboard examines how it now may be influencing the creation of playlists on streaming platforms. Leaders from labels voiced varying degrees of certainty about the exchange of money for exposure on playlists. Spotify has some rules in place to prevent this pay-for-play scenario, but creative companies can find ways to circumvent them.

Spotify’s new privacy policy: Information security is a top concern for most Internet denizens these days, so the recent updates to Spotify’s privacy policy sparked some strongly worded think pieces. Take Forbes for an example, going so far as to call the changes “creepy” and “perturbing.” The article has a comparison of the old and new policy. Perhaps we’re jaded, but this all seems par for the course in doing business online these days.