The term Various Artists is used in the record industry when numerous singers and musicians collaborate on a song or collection of songs.

Most often on Last.fm, compilation album tracks appear under the name of Various Artists erroneously because the individual artist is not listed in the album's ID3 information.

Sometimes, single releases may be credited to Various Artists when their profits are going to charity and, usually in high-profile cases, are sometimes known by a group name. Examples include Band Aid with their releases of Do They Know It's Christmas? and USA for Africa with We Are the World.

Various Artists is also an actual performance name for Torsten Pröfrock, who runs the German DIN label. Torsten performs also as Dynamo, Erosion, Resilent, Traktor besides some others. He's a good friend of Robert Henke and since fall 2004 he a member of Monolake.