This is not exactly payola though, at least not in the sense of payola we had before. Last.fm does play artists who have not licensed their music there AFAIK but I would guess that having someone find all indie artists and upload their music would be impossible.
Furthermore I had the impression that Soundexchance is not exactly the best way for indie artist to retrieve their money.

For the time, I’m still watching the situation but I’ve also opened a Foosic account just in case