Record companies pay students a bit of pin-money to set up new email addresses from which to bombard radio programmes with fake requests, and "Listeners' Awards" schemes with fake votes.
It is sad, but not really a situation anyone could do much about. The trouble is, once one company starts up this sort of thing, other performers feel pressured to do the same, and soon everyone's at it. If anybody has a theory how to deal with this kind of thing, let's hear it!
   I know people will instantly call me a conspiracy theorist for daring to suggest such behaviour occurs. Well, i assure you it does.