There are promotion people hired to "push" recordings. They are paid by the artist or record label to contact (sometimes pester) disc jockeys about new recordings and often selected cuts that they hope will gain attention.

There is nothing illegal about this, at least here in the U.S. and I would assume U.K.   A person is hired to promote a recording, but they are not paying off anyone responsible for insuring it would be played - the DJ, music director, station owner, etc.