An Art Track is a video automatically generated by YouTube Music, displaying a static image (the album cover) alongside the song’s audio.
These videos are created from the audio and metadata delivered through limbo/ and cannot be edited or customized like regular videos.
Art Tracks are published on:
The Topic Channel, which YouTube automatically creates for artists who do not have an OAC.
The OAC (Official Artist Channel), if the artist already has one.
What Happens When Changing Distributors
Whether the Art Track is hosted on a Topic Channel or an OAC, views are reset to zero when switching distributors.
YouTube generates new assets (new videos with new IDs) each time it receives a delivery from a different distributor.
For this reason, views from previous Art Tracks cannot be recovered.
Even when the artist has an OAC, the new Art Tracks will be integrated into that channel, but their view counts will also start again from zero.
Recommendation
To avoid relying solely on Art Tracks, we recommend creating your own videos, such as a standard VOD or an official music video, to replace the Art Track.
When YouTube detects that a track has an associated video, the Art Track becomes inaccessible and is automatically replaced by that video.
For this reason, YouTube encourages the creation of official or similar videos for each track.
📘 More information: YouTube Help – About Art Tracks