"graft" (especially to disc jockeys from record companies to play their music), 1938 (in a Variety magazine headline), from pay off "bribery" (underworld slang from 1930) + ending from Victrola, etc. (see Pianola). Compare also plugola "surreptitious promotion of a person or product for a bribe" (1959), from plug (n.) in the advertising sense.

c. 1896, trademark name (1901) of a mechanical player-piano device using perforated rolls of paper, from piano, the ending perhaps abstracted from viola and meant as a diminutive suffix. The pianola's popularity led to a rash of product names ending in -ola, especially Victrola (q.v.), and slang words such as payola. Related: Pianolist.