YouTube is an incredible platform for all types of creators, including musicians. Making the most of your YouTube channel can be essential when it comes to communicating with your audience, promoting your new releases and showing off your cool visuals to support a new track. There are a few different types of channels and ways to use your account. Our goal is for all of our partners to get the most out of their channel.
Topic Channel
First, it’s essential to understand how Precise Digital handles distribution to YouTube. When you distribute your music through Precise, we deliver to both YouTube Music and YouTube.com. This process automatically generates a video known as an Art Track. An Art Track features a static image of your artwork with your music playing in the background. Comments are automatically disabled on these Art Tracks, and you can identify them by the “Music” section in the description.
Art Tracks are not delivered to your own personal YouTube channel. Instead, a new channel will automatically be created for you, this is called a Topic Channel. These will be generated under your artist name, for example, if your artist name is “The Band,” it will appear as “The Band – Topic.”
Having a Topic channel doesn’t affect your own personal channel. Their primary function is to serve as a library for your tracks on YouTube.
As these channels are auto-generated they cannot easily be accessed, edited, or deleted by you, the artist. However, if something is ever incorrect on a Topic Channel, we can utilise our relationship with YouTube to make any amendments as promptly as possible.
Artist Managed Channel – (Owned & Operated – O&O)
To simply put it, an Artist Managed Channel is a YouTube channel set up and controlled by the artist themselves. This type of channel is the foundation of your YouTube presence.
Identical to an Artist Managed Channel, a Partner-Managed Channel has the same capabilities, however is typically operated by the artist’s record label or management company.
With an Artist/Partner Managed Channel you will have full control over the content, branding and engagement with fans, however there are additional artist-centric features which you will not have access to yet without having an Official Artist Channel.
If you are distributing your music to YouTube and do not yet have an Official Artist Channel, it is likely you will have a Topic Channel alongside your own personal channel.
Official Artist Channel (OAC)
At Precise, we assist our partners by consolidating all of their channels into a single verified account. This means that when your O&O Channel is upgraded to an Official Artist Channel, subscribers from your Topic Channel, Vevo Channel (if applicable), and your Artist Managed Channel, will all be merged into one location making it easier for your fans to find you, and your music.
The subscribe button and subscriber count will no longer be displayed on your existing channel or topic channel, and your content will now be visible to all of your subscribers, regardless of which channel they originally subscribed to. You may also see an increase in your Official Artist Channel subscriber count as your audience is consolidated.
When you have an Official Artist Channel, you will then also have a musical note next to your channel name to show verification.
Not only does having an OAC benefit your fans, it will also benefit you as you will now have access to multiple new features and a suite of tools built specifically for artists.
Official Artist Channel Benefits:
- Enhanced Promotion: New music videos and content are visible to all your subscribers across previous channels, improving visibility and reach.
- Featured Slot: Customisable “featured” video slot which plays when viewers visit your channel. (This is great for promoting your latest release)
- Analytics for Artists: Detailed insights into your audience, video performance, and engagement.
- Ticketing Integration: Easy promotion of live events and ticket sales.
- Page Organisation: Generate playlists of your content to focus your music to key audience types.
- YouTube Studio: Access to customise your YT Music Profile.
- Merchandise Integration: Seamless promotion of your merchandise directly on your channel.
- Community: Connect/engage with your fans with polls, pictures, live etc through the Community section.
- Official Status: Verification and a more professional appearance on the platform, enhancing your credibility and official status as an artist.
Topic Channel
Official Artist Channel
