Don't Release A Collab Until You Watch This
A collaboration’s artist credits shape where the track appears and who can discover it—choose the release setup that fits your goals.
Playing a video or selecting a transcript timestamp connects to YouTube, which may use cookies. See our privacy policy.
Music Marketing Monday
Get the written breakdown of ideas like this every Monday.
One practical idea a week, read by 18,000+ artists, managers and labels.
Quick summary
A collab can be credited with multiple primary artists, as a featured appearance, as a remix, or as part of a compilation. Those choices affect whether the track appears in each artist’s main discography, among popular songs, or in an “Appears On” section. Andrew uses real release examples to show how the credits play out across artist profiles and why the distinctions can be easy to miss. The right setup depends on how closely each artist identifies with the track and whether they want it anchored to their project. Multiple primary artists can connect both discographies, while a feature can suit a contributor whose sound or creative role is less central. Remixer credits and compilations serve different cases. The video also walks through setting up a collaboration in a distributor.}
Transcript(English)
In this video, we're going to be talking about the different ways you can release collaborations. And the reason why this is an interesting topic is because there's a lot of different ways you can collaborate with someone. You can be featured as an artist, you can be a multiple primary artist, you can be a remixer, uh, and then you can also be on a compilation, right? And I think there might even be more ways to be on a release, but the the the reality is that each of these different ways that you're tagged on a release as an artist changes the scenario in how the song appears on your profile, but also how it gets pushed out to different people's followers. And there is actually a best option, uh, but also the best option changes depending on what you're trying to accomplish. And I want to first just demonstrate how different types of releases can show up. Um, and then we'll
talk about the different pros and cons of them. And then we'll jump over to a distributor and I'll show you how to distribute them. [singing] [music] >> So, here we are at Spiritbox Profile and uh, the reason I came to them is because I know they've done a few collaborations recently. So, I'm going to go to their discoraphy and they have this ties that bind release here. So, you'll notice that ties that bind here shows up directly on Spirit Box's profile. Um, if I go to 2X KO, it also shows up directly on their profile. If I go to Courtney Lant, it shows up directly on her profile
um, right here. But if I go to the releases, you'll notice it's not here. And you'll notice if I go to Joe Ford, it's not on his profile and it's not here because it came out in 2025. So it would have actually would be a little further back. Um, but we don't see it. And then I'm going to go back to 2X KO again and it's on their profile and it is on their page. So, why is it on some of these artists pages and why is it in some of their uh their like popular songs list and not for other artists? And essentially that comes down to who is a featured artist and who is a primary artist and they don't make it
super clear on Spotify. I mean, I guess they they kind of do, but if I open up the release and I come here, let me zoom in. You'll see that this at the release level there is a there are primary artists here tagged on the release and this determines that like essentially where the release goes. So the release is like the album even though it's a single. This is like the UPC level, the release level, the album level. And then in it you have songs. In this case, there's just one song. And so these two artists, Spiritbox and 2X KO are primary artists on the release. Therefore, that release goes on both of their discoraphy pages. Right? So we see it in Spirit boxes. If I go to 2X KO, we see it on two XKOs's.
Show full transcript
Now, that's not the case for Courtney, right? Courtney is not listed as a release. So, we go on her profile and it's not there. It still shows up here, but it doesn't show up there. Now, if we go to Joe Ford's, it's not in either. And this is where I'm a little a little torn, honestly, cuz I don't know exactly what the case here. What I'm wondering is if Joe Ford might be like a remixer, and I can't really confirm that, but he's tagged as a producer, which is interesting. Um, but he's Courtney's definitely a featured artist because we see her in the title here. Um, and Joe Ford is is something else. So, again, little a little confusing. I'm not
exactly sure why it's not on Joe Ford's, but if we go to Joe Ford's page, um what'll kind of confirm is if I go all the way down to the bottom of the profile, there's an appears on section. And let me zoom out. Um and it shows up there. So, that's another reason why I'm pretty sure he's listed as like a a remixer or maybe it's like a production credit or something. Uh it's a little vague, right? So, forgive me for that piece of information. But what is this appears on section? Like, what the heck is this? Well, I'm going to go on this for Joe Ford, I guess. And you'll see that um this guy has a lot of releases in his appears on section. And some of them are just like this where he's on the release. We can also go to the Cell Dweller release and um he is on here and
this is a remix album. So, this kind of confirms the theory that um that he is a remixer on the original track as well. Some of these you'll notice say various artists and this here is an example of a compilation essentially. Um it's a compilation various artists and so this there is no primary artist. It only shows up as an appears on. So like a compilation is like an entirely different type of release. [laughter] So just in this one song, this is why I picked this example because I knew it was kind of weird and it would show interesting cases. We have a dual primary artist release. It goes to both of their profiles. We have a featured artist where it shows up on her popular songs but not as a release. And we have
a remixer where it only shows up in the appears on section. So what's actually best? Well, what's best kind of depends on what you're going for. So, if if you are working with someone who you are uh like kind of proud to be working with, but hope hopefully everyone that you're working with, you're probably working with, but what I really mean is you're working with someone who like you want to kind of be tied to in a longer way. Um, you want to do the multiple primary artist release because that ensures it goes on both of your profiles. So, let's say you have 50,000 monthly listeners, I have 50,000 monthly listeners, and we do a multiple primary artist release. that release is going to show up on both of our profiles. Meaning, if in uh 2 years your band
triples in size and you get all these new fans coming listen to your stuff, well, when your fans go through your discoraphy, they're going to see that release that we did together. So, if if I kind of believe that you're like that you're going to be an artist is going to continue to grow um and I like believe in you and I want to be associated with you. doing that's the best case scenario because it's going like your future growth kind of helps me out and my future growth helps you out. So, it's a win-win scenario. Um, when you do a feature, it shows up in that popular songs thing, but it's not in the discoraphy. So, like it could get pushed away where basically no fans ever going to find it. And if we go back here to Courtney the Plant, um, it's in the popular songs, it's not in the the discoraphy, but it is down here in the
appears on section. Um, so if the song were to get overridden by other songs getting more popular, then fans might never find it because it's not in the discoraphy section. So, um, when would you do a feature then, right? Like why would you ever do a feature if doing a multiple primary artist thing is always better? Well, let's say, for example, you specifically don't want it to show up as a release under your project because like it doesn't really fit the vibe of your project. Um, let's say I guess in the case of of Courtney the Plant here, um, I don't know that how she treats. And by the way, Courtney the Plant is the vocalist of of um, Spirit Box. So, she's kind of pulling a fast one here where it's it's uh, the band's tagged and she's tagged. This was probably done for numbers because like
the band's probably not actually involved at all. It's probably just Courtney, but Courtney was like, "Well, let's push it out to the 4 million people who listen to Spirit Box cuz they'll probably like it." I don't know if that's the actual case, but that's a super common tactic that artists use. Um, I know so many people where they have a solo project and they just tag their band to help things out, right? Because like why wouldn't you? Uh, and a lot of cases your fans will like it. So, it's it's a win-win for everyone involved, assuming that your fans will like it. But, uh, I don't know if Courtney had planned like the details of her solo projects, but like for whatever reason, she didn't want to be a primary artist on this release. She wanted to be a feature. So maybe she didn't feel like this song was a good representation of like her music. Um, so she wants to be
involved with it, but it's not like her thing. And so, for example, if if you're you'll see this a lot of times in cases where there's a popular singer just on a on a a producer song, there'll be a featured vocalist. And essentially like a lot of the times that'll be like the producer kind of like wrote the whole instrumental. some cases they even wrote the lyrics and the vocals and the singer coming in and they're just singing their part. They're not like as creatively involved with it and maybe that's even in the wrong genre for them. So they don't want this completely out of genre song living in their discoraphy something that like they were less involved with creatively but they still like the project, right? So this kind of like this little middle ground where you can be on the song but not be as committed to the song. And it can also be a situation where like
it it let's say it's something you want to be involved with artistically, but you don't want it. It it kind of looks bad for you to have it because it's like with a much smaller thing. It's it's like a way to kind of commit to it a little bit less. So, a lot of times if someone is like doing a paid feature for like a bigger artist to be a paid feature on their song, like, hey, I'll give you $5,000 to wrap this verse on my song. uh it'll generally be a feature and not a primary release because that main artist doesn't want all of their features to clutter their discoraphy because they might be doing a feature every week. Like if I go and look up Snoop Dogg, Snoop Dogg's kind of known for doing a ton of collaborations to where I even wonder if if all of his collaborations are even shown on here. But if I open up his appears on section where all these things show, um he's got all these
releases. And I don't know if this is even all of them because like the dude's on a lot of releases and I'm pretty sure there's there's a couple I can think of that I don't see here. So I don't know if this is capped at a certain amount. And now if you're remixing a song, then you kind of have a decision of do you tag it as like your remixer or do you just tag yourself as another primary artist and call it like your remix? Uh, so that kind of depends on your situation, but basically like declaring yourself as a remixer is like the feature and making making yourself the multiple primary artist is just like making yourself a primary artist. So you you kind of have a similar decision. Like if you're a vocalist, you're usually going to call it a feature and if you're the remixer, you're going to call it a remixer. But if you feel more creatively tied to the project, you're going to make yourself a primary artist. In both those cases, there are some
limitations when it comes to like if you have an album and you have like a bunch of different collaborators. Sometimes it gets a little weird in your distributor where like different songs will have different primary artists than the release and that can get kind of confusing. Um, but I'm not going to dive down that rabbit hole because honestly in some cases it depends on your distributor. Like I've seen cases where a distributor is able to tag things a certain way that is not the standard way it works in the distributors that most people use. And a compilation is kind of an edge case. Like an artist is generally not going to release a compilation. But but like for for the perspective of like a record label or something that they want to release a song from like one song from every one of their artists and just like release it and then market it almost like a playlist. Uh that's where you use a compilation. It's not something that an
artist is generally going to use because like as an artist, even if you're releasing all songs that are already out, you can just call that an album. You don't have to call it a compilation. It can just be an album. So there as an artist, I think there's essentially no reason to use the compilation thing because it just like kind of limits where things go on the platform. um unless you really don't want it to be in your discoraphy, but in that case, you probably wouldn't want to turn it into an album anyways. Um so, for the most part, don't worry about that. Now, we're going to jump over into a distributor and I'm going to show you how some of this stuff works because I think it's interesting. We're here in Drokid and I'm going to go to upload music and we're going to start playing with some of these options. And I'm going to go down to well actually we're going to start here
with the band section. So, you pick an artist on here, but let's say I want to have a collaborator. I can do and collaborator and I can do Murder Knight, which is one of my fun side projects. Um, and so here you get an option for is this a collaboration or is this the band name? Basically, is your band name Everwaking Moment and Murder Knight or is it a collaboration between Murder Knight and Everwaking Moment? And so, this is the case of a multiple primary artist. This is at the release level. And now that being said, I'm going to remove this. And then we're going to go down to the song. Let's say I have a song and I'm going to call it potato. And uh you probably seen a lot of cases
where people write potato featuring whatever. Uh Drokid wants you to use this dedicated featured song to artist title, but different distributors might actually want it in the title. So, you know, keep pay attention to what your platform is telling you. But, um, here they want you to add featured artist to song title. So, this is where you add that feature. If I do yes, add featured artist to track title. And I could do featured artist or remixer. So, remember before I was saying how like a like a remixer is kind of like a featured artist. So, like if you if you're doing a remix, you could either be a remixer or you could just call yourself a primary artist. And if you're a featured vocalist, you could be a featured artist or you could be a multiple primary artist. It's kind of a decision of how much you want to be tied to the project. Um, and if if you if you're totally
creatively involved and you like the person you're collaborating with. Basically, you'd you'd rather be a primary artist in every case. Um, so the only time you want to be a feature is if you want a little bit of separation or your collaborator wants a little bit of separation. Um, but featured artist or remixer, this is where you you go ahead and do it. And one thing I realized that I' I've forgotten to mention is whether you're a primary artist or featured artist, it does get pushed in Spotify's algorithm to people who interact with any of these people. So, if you have a featured artist on your song, it gets pushed to that artist followers and release radar, even if they're not a primary artist. Um, remixes are different. So that is kind of a weird scenario where Spotify kind of like they don't always push
alternate versions and I think that goes for remixes too. So that might be a different scenario. But like if someone's a featured artist, it gets pushed to their followers as well as if they're a multiple primary artist. Now let's say you wanted to do a remix but you don't want to be a remixer. So like in that case you would go and add the remixer as a primary artist. And then in the um the song version information we can do other and call it the you know remix version or we could call it like the you know potato remix right like [laughter] whatever you want to call it. And actually this is something that I did for this release. Um it was a multiple primary artist release between my band
and my side project. Basically, I got one of my band songs and my collaborated murder, Jerry, he remixed it and then we released it as a multiple primary artist release between my projects, right? So, it was a it was a murder release of a remix of every waking moment. And so, what we did is in the title, we called it the claustrophobic remix. So, basically, we called the remix Doom because that was the working title of claustrophobic before it was called Claustrophobic. And then we called it the claustrophobic remix. Um, and why you might some of you might be like, "Well, that's not how you would title it. You do blah blah. You should call it the Murder Night remix, whatever." Right? There's there are some rules with this stuff, but there's not really any rules for this stuff. Like, you you can call your stuff whatever you want, right? This is technically claustrophobic. So, the technical
information, the technical title here should probably be claustrophobic and then like Murder Night Remix or something like that or electronic remix. But, this felt funner and fresher to me uh to do it this way. And guess what? It worked totally okay. No problems at all. And then it it kind of, you know, when I explain the song to people, um, it gives it a cool little backstory of like, yeah, the original song was called Doom because the guitar riff of the song was inspired by the music of Doom 2016. And even though the song sounds nothing like it in the end, but it was inspired by that. And then it turns claustrophobic because the lyrics transformed the meaning of the song. So, we wanted to call the remix Doom, even though Doom, the remix, is actually a lot like kind of softer than the main version. So, when it comes to marketing any of these
different versions, they all essentially work the same. It's just that if you're a primary artist, there's a little bit more of an incentive to promote it because it actually lives on your profile. And if you want to see how you should promote that, then check out this video right here to see how you can promote your music with meta ads from start to finish. And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss my next upload. Anyways, thanks so much for watching and I'll see you next video. Bye.
Grow your music with a proven ad system
Learn the Meta ads and streaming growth playbooks Andrew uses across artists, labels, and agency campaigns.
Keep exploring