Use

Popular musicians normally does a cover because they want to pay tribute to the original artist, because they want to win some audience or for trying to be successful as people like to listen to familiar music.

There are three types of artists that depend on covers: 

Use in the advertisements: This type of music has been used for advertisements, so you can use a very famous song without paying the copyright and the people would recognize the product for the song. For the publicitors it is very important that their product is relationated to a famous song, so everytime that people listen or hear the song they immediately think of their product. That works better if the song is very famous because there are more chances that people listen to this song on the radio. But that has a big problem, the copyright of very famous song is very expensive so a good way of avoiding the copyright is using a cover of the song because you have the same result within a less price. 

Tribute acts: those are bands that live from recreating the music of a band or an artist in particular. Normally when these bands are already separate or the artists are dead. Bands like Led Zepagain, Aunstralian Pink Floyd Show and The Iron Maidens are dedicated to this. They do this to allow the audience to listen to the hits of their favorite bands even tough they don’t perform anymore. Some plays the songs as faithfully as possible but some do their own versions.

Cover acts or bands: are performers who plays a variety of cover songs from different artists to audiences who likes hit songs. Normally they perform very famous songs like the ones in the Billboard list or in the Top 40, but sometimes they play classic songs from the previous decade

 Revivalist artists or bands: are performers that recreate a whole past genre to introduce it to younger audiences. These artists try to be seen by a young audience so, even it’s a past genre, for the audience is a new one.

These musicians expect to be seen by some people that can open them some doors. With this system lots of people has had the chance of recording their own music and starting their own career in music, always very relationated with youtube and videos.

Normally famous bands don’t record any covers but they do perform some in their concerts because for the audience it is a very good experience to hear very famous songs performed by their favorite artists.