payola (n.)

"graft" (especially to disc jockeys from record companies to play their music), 1938 (in a Variety magazine headline), from pay off "bribery" (underworld slang from 1930) + ending from Victrola, etc. (see Pianola). Compare also plugola "surreptitious promotion of a person or product for a bribe" (1959), from plug (n.) in the advertising sense.