Get your YouTube Official Artist Channel
What an Official Artist Channel is, the conditions YouTube sets, why it is granted rather than claimed, and what Run does and does not do in it.
An Official Artist Channel is YouTube’s way of putting everything of yours under one channel. The auto-generated topic channel, a Vevo channel if you have one, and the channel you already run are merged into a single channel, subscribers included.
It works differently from the other store profiles. Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer let you claim a page. An Official Artist Channel is granted by YouTube, against a catalog delivered on your behalf and a channel that meets YouTube’s own conditions. It is not something you request at will: the request is submitted by the distributor or label rather than by the artist, and YouTube decides.
What YouTube looks at
YouTube publishes the current conditions itself, and they are the ones that decide this. In outline:
- A channel you own, focused on your own music rather than on a mix of unrelated content.
- At least one official release delivered by a distributor or a label. This is the part Run supplies. Every release you put out through us is delivered to YouTube Music unless you switched that store off before submitting, which is covered in Choosing stores and Content ID.
- A channel that follows YouTube’s policies, including its copyright and monetization rules.
Read their page for the version in force, since these conditions are YouTube’s to change.
Before you start
- Check that a release is actually live. Delivery is our end and it is quick, but ingestion is YouTube’s clock, and the topic channel appears only once they have processed the release. Tracking delivery shows where a release has reached.
- Sort the channel out first. Merging is easier to reason about when the channel you want kept is clearly the artist’s channel, not a shared or general-purpose one.
How to go about it
- Make sure at least one release is live on YouTube Music, delivered through Run.
- Sign in to the YouTube channel you want to become your Official Artist Channel, and make sure it is the channel you actually own.
- Confirm the channel meets the conditions above: your own music, your own uploads, policies in good standing.
- Read YouTube’s Official Artist Channel guide and follow the route it gives for your situation. YouTube decides, and only YouTube.
After it is granted
Your channels merge into one, the topic channel’s catalog sits under it, and existing subscribers carry across rather than being reset. The channel is yours to run from there, and Run has no controls over it.
Two things it does not change. The picture on your artist card in Run still comes from your connected Spotify profile, not from YouTube. And the YouTube link you can save on an artist in Run is a listed link that travels with the profile: it does not connect a store page and does not affect where a delivery goes.
Content ID is a separate thing entirely. It is a rights-management network you opt into per release, not a channel feature, and having one has no bearing on the other. See Choosing stores and Content ID.
If nothing happens, or the wrong channel is merged
YouTube’s own support handles a refusal, an unmerge, or a channel that was merged in error. We have no access to any of it.
Where we can help is proving the catalog side. If you need to show which releases were delivered on your behalf, and when, open a request at Support naming the releases, and we can tell you what went to YouTube Music and where it stands.