Many artists discover they have two or three YouTube channels without having created them all. There is the channel you run yourself, an automatic "Topic" channel holding your releases, and sometimes an old channel from years ago. An Official Artist Channel, often shortened to OAC, brings this together in one place.
Your channel and the Topic channel
When a release is delivered to YouTube, YouTube automatically creates a channel called "Your Name - Topic". It holds your tracks as art tracks: the audio with the cover as a still image. You do not manage it and cannot upload to it.
Your own channel is where your music videos, Shorts, live clips and posts live. To a fan these look like two unrelated channels. Subscribers are split, search can show either one, and your releases sit apart from the rest of your content.
What an Official Artist Channel changes
With an OAC, your own channel becomes the official home of the artist on YouTube:
- A music note badge appears next to the channel name.
- Your releases from the Topic channel show up on your channel, organised into albums and singles.
- Subscriber counts are generally combined, so fans are counted in one place.
- Searches for your name point people to this channel first.
- You get more control over how your artist profile looks on YouTube and YouTube Music.
For a fan this means one place to subscribe, watch and listen. For you it means every upload builds the same channel.
What YouTube usually requires
YouTube sets the rules and updates them, so check the current requirements in its help pages before you ask. In general terms:
- One channel, one artist. The channel represents a single artist or band. Label channels, fan channels and channels mixing several artists do not qualify.
- Official releases on YouTube. Commonly, at least three official releases delivered to YouTube through a distributor or label.
- A clean record. The channel follows YouTube's policies and has no active strikes.
- It looks like an artist's channel. The name matches your artist name, and there is a profile picture, a banner and real uploads.
How the request is made
Artists usually cannot apply on their own. The request is submitted by a partner that manages your music on YouTube, typically the distributor or label that delivers your releases there. They will normally ask for:
- the link to your own channel
- the link to your Topic channel
- your exact artist name as it appears on releases
YouTube reviews the request and decides. Approval is not automatic and can take a while. Ask your distributor whether it handles OAC requests and what it needs from you.
One thing that often gets mixed up: CULT sends whitelist requests for your own channel and channels you work with, so your uploads are not claimed by Content ID. That is a separate thing. A whitelisted channel does not automatically become an Official Artist Channel.
Tidy up before you ask
A request goes more smoothly when the channel is ready:
- Rename the channel to your exact artist name, matching your releases letter for letter.
- Add a clear profile picture, a banner and a short description.
- If you have several channels, decide which one will become official, and keep posting there.
- If the channel was once a personal vlog or gaming channel, consider whether it represents you as an artist now.
- Check that all your releases sit on the same Topic channel. If another artist shares your name, some songs may have landed on the wrong one. Sort that out with your distributor first.
Say Lalə Nova has a channel from school with cover videos, a newer channel with her music videos, and a Topic channel with three singles. She picks the newer channel, renames it to exactly "Lalə Nova", hides the unrelated old videos and asks her distributor to submit the request with both links.
After approval
Upload new music videos to the official channel, not to side channels. Use the same artist name on every release so new music keeps mapping to the same place. And keep the channel alive between releases with Shorts and posts. The badge helps people find you, but what they see when they arrive is up to you.