Industry plant

Industry plant is a pejorative used to describe musicians who ostensibly become popular through nepotism, inheritance, wealth, or their connections in the music industry rather than on their own merits. Artists described as industry plants often present themselves as independent and self-made and are alleged to have their public images manufactured for them by record labels.

The term originated in the early 2010s on hip hop-focused message boards to describe various rappers before being used against pop musicians, such as Clairo, in the late 2010s. It has been criticized in the media and by artists for being disproportionately used against female artists, for placing scrutiny on individual musicians rather than the music industry as a whole, and for its variable meaning.