INTRODUCTION
If you’re an artist, your Official Artist Channel combines all of your content from your various YouTube channels into a single place. Your music videos, songs, and albums are automatically programmed for two new shelves. Your fans won’t know what is what, which channel to subscribe to, or what to watch if you don’t have an official artist channel.
Official artist channels provide these services:
- Content organization: The Official Artist Channel design automatically divides your music collection into album sections and your official music videos into a new playlist. You can move, delete, and re-add any one of these auto-generated music categories from your channel.
- Choose what you’d like to showcase in the featured video slot for advertising purposes.
- Fan engagement: On YouTube, there is one verified and official channel where you can directly reach out to and engage with your fans.
First of all, you need to understand the two requirements YouTube has to set up your Official Artist Channel.
- You need to own and operate the channel you’re making the request for.
- You need at least 3 official music videos released on the YouTube platform.
To those of you that meet these two requirements, congratulations! You’re only a few steps away from setting up your Official Artist Channel.
This guide will show you how to get an official YouTube channel on different distribution platforms.
CD BABY
If you use CD Baby to distribute your music to digital music platforms, your albums and singles is sent to YouTube Music. When this happens, YouTube automatically generates a “Topic” channel in your name. Artists must have at least three active releases distributed to YouTube Music, a dedicated personal music channel enrolled in the YouTube Partner Program and free of violations.
To claim your official artist channel on CD Baby,
- Head to your CD Baby dashboard,
- Move over to the “featured tools” section and go down to “Claim an official artist channel with YouTube”
- Click that and scroll down to find the artist name you want access to.
- Click on “Get Access” next to the “artist name” and that will start the process of getting verified and claiming your official artist channel.
Click on “Get Access” to enter your Google or YouTube credentials. If you have multiple logins on YouTube, please make sure you are entering the correct credentials for that artist profile you are trying to claim.
YouTube will notify you through email after your official artist channel has been approved. This usually takes about two weeks or more.
DISTROKID
Distrokid makes it quick and easy to claim your official artist channel on YouTube
How to claim your YouTube Official Artist Channel:
- As an artist, ensure you already have a YouTube channel dedicated to your content, and this channel has artist content uploaded to it. If you don’t have any, please create one and give it your artist name.
- Make sure you have at least one release with “Google Play/YouTube” selected as a streaming service within DistroKid.
- Go to the YouTube Official Artist Channel section of your DistroKid account. To get there:
– Select the Goodies menu in the upper right
– Select “Special access”
– Select “YouTube Official Artist Channel”
- Select the artist you want to associate with your YouTube channel.
- Authenticate into your YouTube account.
- Claim your channel!
TUNECORE
To qualify, you must own and manage the artist channel that you requested. Your YouTube artist channel should contain at least three music videos distributed via TuneCore.
- Go to the YouTube For Artists page on your Tunecore dashboard.
- Select an artist from the dropdown menu (Note: only eligible artists will be displayed).
- You will be directed to YouTube to sign in to your account. This is the account with which you want to be associated with that artist.
- An authorization request will be sent to YouTube after successfully logging in.
You will receive a confirmation email that your request was received.
UNITED MASTERS
According to United Masters, they deliver your music to YouTube as Art Tracks. YouTube creates auto-generated “Topic” channels to house those tracks. Unfortunately, they do not have an automated solution for that as of yet. We will update this post when they do, or you can join our mailing list to get first-hand information on our latest posts and promotional content.
Note: You can apply for a new designated Official Artist Channel, but without independent content, the request may take longer to process.
SPINNUP
To get started, you’ll have to submit a request to their artist support team, and they can help you start the process for this. Let them know you’re applying for an Official Artist Channel, and provide these items to speed up the process.
• Artist Name
• Topic Channel URL
• At least 3 Official Music Video URL’s
• Artist Label / Sub-Label
Provide them with all of these items, and they will submit them to YouTube and make the request on your behalf.
