When creating a release that has multiple artists who have been given the Main Artist role, there is good chance that your release will be classified as 'Various Artists' by the streaming platforms. This might be something you want, or something you would like to avoid. However, this classification happens automatically, so it is important to know when it will be assigned and what that means for how your release will be presented. To jump in and give you the short answer, when you have Four or more 'release-level' Main Artists on a release, it will automatically be classified as a "Various Artist" Release.

An artist is considered to be a main artist when they have a Main Artist role on at least 50% of the tracks on release. For example, on a 10 track release, only artists that have Main Artist roles on at least 5 tracks are counted as Main Artists at a release level.

These are the three important things to take note of in terms of how a "Various Artists" release is presented on the streaming platforms:

1.

Instead of the Main Artist name(s) appearing under the release tile, we see the "Various Artists" classification.

Spotify:

Apple Music:

Deezer:

2.

A "Various Artists" release will not appear in the "Albums", "Singles" or "Discography" section of the artist's profile on the streaming platforms. Rather, it will appear in the "Appears On" section.

The different platforms order the "Appears On" section differently. For example, on Spotify the releases in the "Appears On" section and are ordered by popularity, while on Apple Music they are ordered by release date, with the most recent releases appearing first.

3.

If a track from a "Various Artists" album is one of the artist's top tracks, that track will still appear in the artist's highlighted tracks section.

Whether or not your release is classified as "Various Artists", depends entirely on how many Main Artists roles the release has overall. If your release has one track or twenty tracks, if it has the specific number of Main Artist roles it will automatically be classified as "Various Artists".

And what is that number?

For Spotify, a release with four or more Main Artists will be classified as "Various Artists" .

And for Apple Music the number is five Main Artists.

The rest of the streaming platforms follow one or the other of these. However, because we cannot send different information for your release to different streaming platforms, it is best to follow the building that:

In this case, it is important to remember that the "Various Artists" classification is primarily determined by the number of Main Artist roles on the release. So if you have too many Main Artists on your release, it is recommended to either remove some of them, ot to give some of those artists the "Featuring" role, which is a 'contributing' artist role rather than a primary artist role. But as there are seven different roles you can choose from when adding artists to your track, here is a general guide as to which roles are likely to contribute to a "Various Artist" classification and which will not:

These roles do contribute to a "Various Artists" classification:

Main Artist

Remixed By

Versus (vs.)

Meets

These roles do not contribute to a "Various Artists" classification:

Featuring

Presents

With (Usually does not count toward the "Various Artists" classification)

Please be aware however, that outside of the "Main Artist" and "Featuring" roles, this guideline might not be correct for every streaming platform.

No. This this is an entirely automated process. The only way to ensure that your release will have a "Various Artists" classification on all the streaming platforms, is to have at least five artists in "Main Artist" roles.

If you are creating a classical release, the "Various Artists" classification will depend on the number of "Performers" you add to the release. (The number of composers you add to a release will have no effect on the "Various Artists" classification). Please note here that it is the combination of 'artist name + performer role' that is counted, not simply the performer's name. So if a musician is given the 'Piano" role on one track and the 'Violin' role on another track, these would be counted as different roles when calculating the release-level main artist roles.

No. Various artist releases are not pitchable on Spotify for Artists