How to upload music to YouTube Music

To release your music on YouTube Music as an artist, you send it through a distributor. The distributor delivers your audio, cover art and credits to YouTube, and YouTube makes a version of every track that plays on YouTube Music and shows up in search on YouTube.

YouTube has two other kinds of upload, and they're easy to mix up with a release: adding files to your own YouTube Music library, and uploading a video to your channel. This guide covers all three, from YouTube's own Help pages. For the steps every release shares, start with how to release music.

Three kinds of upload

Release it: your distributor delivers to YouTube

YouTube's Help page on music aggregators describes a distributor as a company that helps get your music onto streaming platforms like YouTube and YouTube Music. It adds that even if you upload your music videos through your own artist channel, you need your audio files and metadata delivered to YouTube for your music to be fully published on YouTube and YouTube Music.

According to that page, a distributor prepares your metadata to industry standards, makes the delivery to the streaming platforms and reports your earnings to you. YouTube's advice is to send your music at the highest quality you have, since services often ask for lossless files such as WAV or FLAC.

From the delivery, YouTube makes an Art Track for each track: the sound recording with the album art. YouTube says Art Tracks give every track on every album a YouTube version, and that they appear in album playlists and in search. It identifies each one by its ISRC and the release's UPC, which is one more reason to keep your codes the same everywhere. Who owns your ISRC codes explains them.

The same delivery usually goes to every other store too. Releasing on every platform covers where else it lands, and how early to send your music covers the timing.

Uploading to your own YouTube Music library

YouTube Music lets any listener add their own files. Its Help page on uploading music to your library gives the steps: on a computer, drag the files onto music.youtube.com, or press your profile picture and choose Upload music. It takes FLAC, M4A, MP3, OGG and WMA files, up to 100,000 songs, and the upload can't be done from the mobile app.

This is a locker for your own collection. YouTube says you're the only one who can play the music you've uploaded, and that other YouTube Music users won't have access to it. It's handy for hearing a demo or a test master on your phone. It doesn't release the song.

Uploading a video to your channel

Your YouTube channel is yours to post to. In YouTube Studio you press Create, choose Upload videos and pick the file. That's how a music video, a lyric video or a live take gets onto YouTube.

It has to be a video. YouTube's list of supported file formats says audio files such as MP3 or WAV can't be uploaded to create a YouTube video, and suggests turning the audio into a video with editing software first.

A video on your channel and a delivered release work together. The video gives people something to watch and share, and the release puts the song on YouTube Music with its cover and its credits.

After the release: your Official Artist Channel

Once you have a release on YouTube, you can bring everything together in an Official Artist Channel. YouTube says it merges the subscribers from your own channel and from the Topic channel YouTube made for your Art Tracks into one place, and gives you Analytics for Artists.

YouTube's requirements include:

• you own and run a YouTube channel for one artist or band, focused on the music;
• you have at least one official music release on YouTube, delivered by a music distributor or label;
• the channel follows YouTube's policies.

You also need one of a short list of routes in, such as having your music distributed by a partner in YouTube's Services Directory. The request goes through your label or distributor. YouTube recommends having at least one public video on the channel first.

Promotion comes next: Shorts with your song, a Premiere for the video and posts on your channel around the day. YouTube Music promotion and YouTube Shorts for musicians cover those.

YouTube with Audora

Every Audora release goes to YouTube Music, alongside Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok and Instagram. Audora is the label on your release, and the masters and the ISRCs stay yours.

• Files checked before release. The audio, the cover and the credits are checked against what the stores ask for before the release goes out.
• A date with room. Audora dates your release to give the editors time.
• The videos. Lyric videos, song teasers and behind-the-song clips made from your song with your own photos, logo, colors and font. Your first video is on us.
• The posts. Audora writes the YouTube posts for a release in your voice and publishes the ones you approve to your channel. You can pick the cover, add the video to one of your channel's playlists and post your first comment under it.
• The numbers. Each post shows its views from the next morning, with where the views came from and the top countries.

TikTok, YouTube, Instagram (Stories included) and Facebook Pages post automatically, and nothing goes out until you approve it. Stories carry no link sticker, so your release link goes in your bio.

The exact steps for your release are in your account, each dated from the release day you pick. Audora keeps adjusting them, adding, dropping and retiming steps, as it learns what works best for its artists. What every track gets shows the full release.