ALBANY – Warner Music Group has agreed to pay $5 million to settle an investigation into payoffs for radio airplay of artists, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said yesterday.

Warner is the second major recording company to reform and settle with Mr. Spitzer in a practice the attorney general called industry-wide.

“Unfortunately, other companies continue to engage in them. I applaud Warner’s decision to halt this conduct, cooperate fully with my office, and adopt new business practices,” he said.

Mr. Spitzer has called the practice “pervasive” in the industry.

Mr. Spitzer said the settlements with Sony and Warner should benefit artists and consumers, who can expect a wider range of artists on the airwaves based on “artistic merits.”

“Artists, especially new artists and lesser known artists who did not have major backing, should find a more open environment to have their music heard and hopefully succeed,” Mr. Spitzer said.

“The reforms we have agreed to with the attorney general are consistent with the internal reforms that our new management team implemented earlier this year,” a Warner Music spokesman, Will Tanous, said. “We consider this to have been a valuable process. From our perspective, radio cannot be too consumer-driven. The music that people hear on the radio always should represent the highest quality the industry has to offer.”

A 1960 federal law and related state laws bar record companies from offering undisclosed financial incentives in exchange for airplay. The practice was called “payola,” a contraction of “pay” and “Victrola,” the old wind-up record player.