Ghost producing EDM tracks should be discontinued

When I was younger, I distinctly remember the popular music community being in an uproar over lip-syncers like Britney Spears and Ashlee Simpson. Their acceptance in the music world created a crash and a category of “sellouts” — people who accepted their lack of talent and worked with it regardless of its effect on their own careers. It seemed that these artists were somewhat unaffected by the discovery of their egregious secrets and continued on to pop fame.

This was a principle that always thoroughly irritated me as I became more knowledgeable about the music industry. As an artist myself, I recognized the struggle of people who had significant talent and went unrecognized their whole lives because the media was solely consumed with false talent idols.

When I really started to understand and deepen my knowledge of the EDM world, I had a DJ friend of mine loosely mention “ghost producers.” He explained that several major artists in the EDM world passed off other productions as their own, claiming the rights and profits of the tracks.

Again, I was horrified. On one hand, I thoroughly understood the business side of it. It was a lucrative industry, paying up to $20,000 a track for talented wallflowers to produce a hit claimed by a well-known DJ. I also understood that there are instances in which large producers found tracks unknown to the public and capitalized on their potential.

Despite whatever backdoor agreements are being made between ghost producers and major DJs, there are several inherently wrong aspects, both financially and conditionally.

In the music industry, there is a very precarious hierarchy of management that collects and distributes the earned funds throughout the team. This includes all profits and royalties from a song’s success. Though a DJ may create a standard pay for a ghost producer, the success of the song and its royalties usually go toward the DJ who commissioned the work. The real artist rarely gets credit or an influx of profit post-production.

Not only is this decreasing the integrity of the industry, but it is also demoralizing the whole idea that producers in the EDM world are largely self-sufficient. This industry was one of the first of its kind to present a world of self-production. Many of these DJs are self-reliant. They produce, manage and market themselves, especially in the early stages of their careers. Moreover, many of these DJs belong to labels run by other DJs that, in turn, serve less as a platform for success and more as a world of solidarity and production collaboration.

Artists such as Dimitri Vegas and Like Mike have been rumored to be using ghost producers on various tracks, something the general public would have no idea about. When the listener is enjoying his or her favorite hit tracks, the listener assumes that the work is true to the artist.

This brings me to my second point, which makes me particularly angry: morality. There is a moral obligation, not only in real life practice but also in any sort of business to affirm credit to where it is deserved. Legally, it is unethical and considered plagiarism to credit anyone’s work and serve it as your own.

Despite the fact that companies deeply entrenched in the industry may have the fine print somewhere that these tracks were produced by someone else, the plagiarism is still legitimate since the general public is absolutely clueless.

Much like the lip-syncing pop princesses of the early ’90s, these ghost producers are a farce to the magic of the genre. Living in L.A., I have seen far too many local, smaller DJs work their entire lives self-promoting on social media, producing till 3 a.m. and working every gig possible in order to get their name out. These people work for the art. We can’t say the same about the major moneymakers using uncredited talent as a key to their easy money.

The modern music industry has been presented with unending challenges throughout its lifetime. Though EDM has been a genre in existence almost since the Cold War, its acceptance in mainstream industry practice has been a part of a new era. The same issues the industry has always had with artist credentials should be merely expanded and broadened in order to encapsulate an aspect of one of the most progressive and popular genres of music. We must recognize the necessity of keeping ethics in practice in the genre or industry. The future of EDM and its legitimacy as a genre depends on our rejection of ghost production.

Madison Cisiewski is a sophomore majoring in music industry. Her column, “Electric Industry,” runs every other Monday.