What is a ghost producer?

A ghost producer makes a record that someone else releases under their own name. The credit goes to the artist, the work was done by the producer, and both parties agreed to it in advance. That is the whole arrangement.

It is far more common in dance music than most listeners assume, and it has been for decades. Touring DJs who play two hundred dates a year do not have two hundred days in a studio. Labels with a release schedule to fill need finished records. The practice sits somewhere between session musicianship and songwriting for hire, both of which have existed for as long as recorded music.

What actually gets sold

This is where people get confused, because "ghost production" covers two very different deals.

• Work for hire. The producer is paid to make a record to a brief. The buyer commissions it, and often nobody else was ever going to have it.
• An existing track sold exclusively. The producer has already finished the record. A buyer takes it, the rights transfer, and it comes off the market. That is what happens on Selecta Trax.

The second is faster and cheaper for the buyer, because the work is already done and you can hear exactly what you are getting before you decide. The first gives you a record built to your brief, but you are buying a promise.

Exclusive means exclusive, or it means nothing

The single most important question to ask any platform is whether a track can be sold more than once. If it can, you are not buying a record, you are buying a licence, and somewhere out there is another artist with the same one.

Every track here is sold once. When it goes, it comes off the catalogue and it is not coming back. That is the entire point of a one-of-one.

Is the producer credited?

Usually not, and that is the arrangement they signed up for. A producer who sells a ghost track is selling the right to have it released under someone else's name. Some are happy with that and treat it as their income; others keep their own artist project separate and sell only the records that do not fit it.

If you are a producer wondering whether it is worth it, the honest answer is that it depends on the number. Look at what selling here involves and decide with the figures in front of you.