Why You Need A YouTube Official Artist Channel

YouTube has been an essential tool for so many artists, not only for music discovery but for branding as well. The problem is that you may have a number of YouTube channels with videos spread out between them. This definitely dilutes your viewership and subscriptions, so YouTube set out to make it easier for both you and your fans by having everything in one place, and that’s by using an Official Artist Channel.

What Is An OAC?

YouTube’s Official Artist Channel (OAC) brings together all your content from your different YouTube channels into one place while giving you more control over your profile, better analytics, and new promotional opportunities.

It allows you to control what fans see first, and gives you the power to showcase certain videos, like a new release or a channel trailer. This will be the first thing fans see when they get to your channel.

Once set up, the OAC will pull in videos from any official sources like record label channels, then organize your songs by albums.

This is also easier on fans because there’s no confusion over which channel to subscribe to, and YouTube even sends them an alert to tell them all about your new channel. Plus, a viewer can now identify an Official Artist Channel thanks to a new note icon. And it makes it easer for fans to find you by generating a clickable card at the top right of related search results.

There are a number of other benefits as well. For instance, you will have access to data from everywhere your video is playing on YouTube, so you can get a real feel for exactly how well each video is doing and what the engagement is like. 

To Qualify

The requirements to upgrade to an Official Artist Channel are fairly easy. All you need is to be the owner or administrator of a channel, and have 3 music videos posted. Finally, you can’t have any policy violation strikes against your existing channels.

There is an additional requirement for YouTube’s Artists on the Rise feature available for those who have an OAC. This gives you the opportunity to be showcased by YouTube and reach more viewers as a result, but you need at least 1,000 subscribers to qualify for this promotion.

Just to be clear, even if you qualify it still doesn’t mean that you’ll be featured though. Youtube still expects you to upload to your channel regularly (ideally once every 2 weeks), have high view counts, and see your watch time increasing. In other words, you have a buzz building.

Claim Your Channel

The easiest and fastest way to claim your channel is through your distributor (i.e. Tunecore, Distrokid, etc,). Follow the steps and you’ll be done in no time.

It’s a little more difficult to do directly through YouTube, as you’ll have to contact a partner manager and wait longer for the upgrade to be processed. This PDF will describe the entire process and more.

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