At least in hip hop, if you have a falling out with your ghost writers they'll make an effort to expose you. For example Quentin Miller here wrote tons of song

At least in hip hop, if you have a falling out with your ghost writers they'll make an effort to expose you. For example Quentin Miller here wrote tons of songs for Drake. https://genius.com/artists/Quentin-miller https://genius.com/artists/Quentin-miller Ghost producing is also a thing, I've heard stories of a producer getting $700 or $600 for fairly popular track because the the actual song is credited to someone else. Hell, in hip hop it's not unheard of for bigger artist to outright steal ideas and concepts from underground artists. Then you can remake the song as your own, and if you decide to reach back and compensate the original artist that's okay but as far as I can tell you'll very rarely get into legal trouble. Case in point https://www.bet.com/music/2018/06/26/childish-gambino-this-is-america-stolen-debate.html https://www.bet.com/music/2018/06/26/childish-gambino-this-i... It's so easy to become successful if you just steal ideas from people