"It's just the thought that someone has HAD to pay someone to get their artist on the radio. End of story. That positively sucks in my book. What chances are there for me and my other brilliant friend musicians who are releasing our own records and booking our own gigs and trying our hardest to avoid all this."

It all depends on what level you wish to take it.

Suppose you have two owners of two differen restaurants. One owner hires someone to drum up publicity - run ads, hand out flyers, stand on a street corner to hand out sample.   The other owner just decides to let things fly and hope word of mouth gets around to build business.

I'm not sure why there seems to be an aversion to hiring someone for publicity. There doesn't seem to be any question of ethics.