Free tools → Official audio for YouTube
“Official audio” is the upload that stands in for a music video when there is no music video: the recording, the cover art, the artist name and the title, on the artist's own channel. This guide covers what it is, how it differs from the Art Track your distributor may already have generated, what YouTube recommends for the file, and how to build one that looks official in a few minutes.
✨ Make an official audio free →YouTube's encoding recommendations checked 9 September 2026
YouTube describes an Art Track as “an automatically generated YouTube version of a track on a music album” that “consists of the sound recording and the album art”. It is created for label and distributor partners through Content Manager, not uploaded by the artist, and it is what appears on the auto-generated “Topic” channels. It is useful — it exists for every track on every album — but it is a static square over a recording, and it does not live on your channel.
An official audio upload is yours. It sits on your channel with your subscribers, it can be scheduled with the release, it carries your branding, and — the part that matters for retention — it can move with the music. Most artists publish both: the Art Track arrives on its own through the distributor, and the official audio is the version they actually share.
| Container | MP4, with the moov atom at the front (“fast start”) |
| Video codec | H.264, High Profile, 4:2:0 chroma |
| Audio codec | AAC-LC (Opus also accepted), 48 kHz; 384 kbps suggested for stereo |
| Frame rate | The rate the video was made in — 24, 25, 30, 48, 50 or 60 |
| Bitrate, 1080p SDR | about 8 Mbps |
| Bitrate, 2160p SDR | 35–45 Mbps |
| Frame | 16:9 is the standard; other ratios play, the player adapts |
Source: YouTube Help, “Recommended upload encoding settings”. YouTube re-encodes every upload, so these are about giving it a clean source, not about what viewers receive. SLOVO's export follows the container and video recommendations and writes AAC at 192 kbps — below YouTube's suggested 384 kbps, and transparent for a music visual; if you want the higher figure, mux your master in afterwards.
1080p is the sensible default and what most audiences watch at. 4K earns its render time when the visual has fine texture — particles, film grain, smooth gradients — because those band and smear at lower bitrates; a plain cover on a dark background gains nothing from it. The video should be the full track: an official audio is the place people go to hear the whole thing, and cutting it short reads as a teaser.
The song to video page walks through the same flow in more detail, and the lyric video maker covers the case where you want the words on screen as well.
The convention is Artist – Title (Official Audio). It matches how people search and tells them this is the canonical upload rather than a rip. In the description, put the streaming links first, then credits, then lyrics — the lyrics help the video surface for people searching a line they remember. If the music was made with AI, check YouTube's current disclosure rules; they change.