Videos from YouTube's auto-generated topic channels do not appear in search

[TheDeviantCrafter]

What happened?

YouTube automatically generates "Name - Topic" channels for some artists. These do not appear when searching on Grayjay.

• Videos from topic channels do not appear in search results at all.
• If you navigate to one of these videos anyway (ie: by sharing a link to Grayjay), the video will play as expected. If you tap the channel name Grayjay won't display any videos or playlists.

This is more obvious for smaller creators that haven't had their songs reposted by several channels. This is the what I see searching for Virtigo by Evoke. The song doesn't appear on Grayjay search at all.

Grayjay Version

276

What plugins are you seeing the problem on?

Youtube

Plugin Version

219

When do you experience the issue?

• While logged in
• While logged out
• N/A

Relevant log output

No response

[TheDeviantCrafter]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yvjvLqfawpk

To The Ends for the Block by The Longest Johns also doesn't appear in search. This is part of the main channel and not a topic channel.

Possible clues:

• The Longest Johns may have had a topic channel at some point, but merged the videos into an official channel. YouTube offers this feature to creators.
• The video says "Provided to YouTube by Universal Music Group" in the description which is similar to the description of all topic channel videos.
• Topic channels are handled weirdly by the official YouTube app. If you click the channel page, they have playlists for each album but no videos.

[TheDeviantCrafter]

Topic channels can have playlists with videos on other channels.

For example, this playlist featuring Blaze Ya Dead Homie and a few other artists (NSFW) has videos hosted by "Oh! The Horror - Topic" and "Blaze Ya Dead Homie" which is not a topic channel.

Opening "Oh! The Horror - Topic" in the YouTube app shows no videos but multiple playlists. Sharing that link from YouTube to Grayjay lets Grayjay open it, but the channel has no icon and no playlists.

This is wild speculation, but is it possible that topic channels use the YouTube Music API? If so Grayjay would need special handling to search for them.

[TheDeviantCrafter]

This issue is also present on version 2 of the desktop app (Youtube source v219, not signed in)