Distrokid's Major Music Problem

A few weeks ago, I woke up and started getting ready for my day. When I went on Apple Music to play, you guessed it, some music, I saw something. What's this?

A new Xaviersobased single?

Before even listening, I texted the Sadprt group chat in excitement. I played the song and quickly realized that it was the most mediocre piece of shit I had ever heard. To add insult to injury, Xavier wasn't even on the song... yet it appeared on his artist profile.

I now had to clarify what had happened and apologize to my coworkers in the group chat. I felt like an utter fool. I had fallen for what I call the DistroKid Fake Feature Method (DFFM for short).

If you're unfamiliar with this method, it is when an oftentimes unknown/small artist uploads their music through Distrokid, a music distribution service, and they add a bigger artist in the description of the song. By adding this artist, it makes the song a co-release that'll show up on both artists' streaming profiles, even though the bigger artist is not actually on the song.

The unknown artist now has their song displayed at the top of the big artist's profile as a new release or in the "Appears on" section. This has happened to names such as Maxon, Jaydes, and more. I'm pretty sure it happens to 2Hollis like several times a month. Xaviersobased's discography across streaming platforms is full of these fake feature songs.

If you're a small artist and you want to establish credibility as such, this is a terrible way to do it. You're tricking people into listening to your music, and if people feel cheated, they don't want to support you. Sure, it'll get you some easy streams but in the long run it probably does more bad than good for your career.

Something needs to change on Distrokid because this phenomenon is out of control. Why shouldn't you have to approve features before they show up on your profile? Not only does Distrokid need to fix this but some of you rappers should take a look at yourselves. If you truly believe you're an artist, carry yourself with some sort of dignity, this type of stuff is annoying, corny, and lame. In my opinion, this is the epitome of "gimmick rapper."

I feel like many rappers worry too much about numbers and "blowing up" rather than creating a solid body of work and building a strong foundation fanbase. Comethazine actually blew up utilizing a method similar to this on SoundCloud but he was really the first and last example of someone who got popular from that. The SoundCloud era was also just a completely different landscape and I don't think this will help anyone build a good community anytime soon.

What do you guys think of this trend? Is it less of an issue than myself and others make it out to be?