YouTube Official Artist Channel Certification (OAC)

A Youtube Official Artist Channel (OAC) gathers, in one single place, all the albums, music and video of an artist allowing artists to directly reach and interact with their fans on YouTube . Click the links for more information on Official Artist Channels.

Thanks to our close partnership with YouTube, Believe offers our producers an accelerated process to have a YouTube Official Artist Channel (OAC) certified.

OAC is a certification program that guarantees viewers that a video channel carries all the official content from an artist or music band (this certification is visible through the music note logo next to the Channel name).

OAC is not the artist page that carries the artist audio tracks (this later is the “topic channel” automatically created by YouTube).

Once your Official Artist Channel is approved, you'll have access to some exclusive features on YouTube, including: 

• An OAC logo (a music note) next to your channel name helping fans to identify your OAC
• Display in the OAC channel all the artist official content, including official videos and audio tracks coming from his topic channel, organized by album.
• Increased visibility through YouTube search
• Ability to Promote your events by featuring the upcoming concert listings
• Access to artist specific tools and analytics in YouTube Studio, including YouTube Analytics for Artist
• Ability to update your YouTube Music picture & bio

Here’s a video from YouTube with some additional info about what it means when Believe helps you qualify for an Official Artist Channel:

OAC request Guidelines

Before submitting an OAC certification request, please consider the following:

• Only the official video channels representing individual music artists or bands are eligible to this certification program.
• OAC request shall be limited to main artists. It is not necessary to request the OAC certification for a composer or author.
• To be eligible for Official Artist Channel certification, the YouTube Video Channel must have:
  • at least one user-uploaded music video, dedicated primarily to your music,
  • no policy violations on the channel.

In addition, you should have at least 1 official audio release delivered to YouTube by a music distributor, under the artist’s name requesting the OAC. (This will guarantee that the Topic channel of the artist that will be liaised with the AOC video channel exists)

The following are not accepted:

• Label, radio stations or influencer channels
• Multi artists channels (Duets…)
• YouTube Topic channels
• Vevo channels
• channels not complying with YouTube community guidelines
• channel that are artist-related but not the official channel (for instance, a channel of the Artist Tour…)

YouTube will only certify video channels from an artist or band.

Note that the Accelerated OAC Request Process is not possible for channels that have less than 100 subscribers. Please, contact the Believe support for manual requests.

If you comply with those requirements, you can submit your OAC Certification Request.

Q&A

Can a VEVO Channel be certified?

No, only "owned and operated" channels can be certified as OAC.

However, OAC allows to embed your content hosted on a Vevo channel within another "owned and operated" video channel with other additional content from you. The resulting OAC channel will then present on a single page the videos hosted on your "owned and operated" YouTube channel, the videos from your Vevo channel as well as your audio albums from your "topic channel".    

This specific OAC certification cannot be done through Backstage. Please revert to Believe Support for such request.

Can a Topic Channel be certified?

Topic channels cannot be certified. They are not "owned and Operated" channel and do not host any video content.

OAC certification is limited to Video channels with official content from the artist.