If I didn't know better, I'd say Vivendi-Universal is in a contest with Elliot "large cash settlement" Spitzer to see who has the bigger set of stones. After nearly everyone and their brother settled payola cases with the New York Attorney General's office, and even after Universal signed an agreement that prohibits it from buying ads that mislead play tracking services (by including more than 60 seconds of a single track) without publishing notice, Blackground Records (a Universal distributed label) it seems has done (almost) exactly that.

According to the New York Times, "Last week, Blackground Records, a Universal-distributed label, purchased ads that enabled the song, "Too Little, Too Late" by the teenage singer JoJo to climb to the No. 2 position on the nation's mainstream pop radio chart. Before that, a representative for Nickelback, a rock band on Roadrunner Records, a Universal-distributed label, paid for ads that inflated the performance of the song "Far Away." The tune ranked as the week's No. 1 song."

Universal is claiming that it holds no ownership stake in Blackground. At the center of the controversy? Entercom, the lone holdout in Spitzer's anti-payola crusade.

[via The New York Times]