How to migrate a YouTube channel to another Google account

OK, this is a little off topic from my usual ad tech nonsense, but since this is an important topic and all the documentation online is super confusing, I thought I’d set the record straight.

Scenario: You want to move a YouTube channel from one Google account to another. For example, if you acquire a company that owns a channel.

Google has ostensibly documented this process in this horrendous help article. Let’s highlight some bad writing:

Truth is this process is really not that hard if you ignore Google’s confusing language.

Here’s the process. We’re going to refer to the “OLD” account and the “NEW” account, and the goal is to move the YouTube channel from OLD to NEW. By “Account” we mean Google account. The phrase “Brand Account” is the confusing part, because it basically means YouTube channel, but for some stupid reason they called it this. The term “Brand Account” doesn’t even appear in the Google Admin console if you search for it, and is on a totally hidden page.

Step 1: Login to the NEW account and into YouTube and create a new Channel with the name of the Channel you wish to move. This is an empty channel that will be copied into later. Note, in the UI this is hard to find, it is at Switch Account->View All Channels->Add Channel. Congrats, you have created a “Brand Account” even if you still have no idea what that is.

Step 2: Go to https://myaccount.google.com/brandaccounts. You should see the YouTube channel you just created. Click on it, then click on “Manage Permissions” (see below).

Step 3: Add the user email from the OLD account that owns the YouTube channel you wish to move as an Owner of the channel. This is important, as the key to making this work is that the same user has “Primary Owner” control over both the channel in the OLD account and the newly created shell account.

Step 4: Wait a week. Seriously. You need to make the user you just added to the NEW account into what Google calls the “Primary Owner” of the channel you created. And Google has a security rule that you need to have been added at least seven days prior to making someone the Primary Owner. So after you’ve waited a week, go back to the Manage Permissions and change the user from the OLD account to the Primary Owner of the new channel you created (the empty one).

Step 5: Login as the OLD user to the OLD account’s YouTube channel. Account->View Advanced Settings->Move channel. You should see the empty channel in the NEW account there. The rest should be easy.

Hope this helps someone.