- YouTube is handing out physical awards to content creators
- Currently, 8 Tier of Physical and Non Physical Awards exist
- The Red Diamond Creator Award is only awarded to 3 Channels
YouTube Creator Awards, commonly known as YouTube Play Buttons, are a series of gifts from YouTube that aim to recognize its most popular channels. They are based on a channel’s subscriber count but are offered at the sole discretion of YouTube.
Each channel is reviewed before an award is issued, to ensure that the channel follows the YouTube community guidelines.
Also, YouTube reserves the right to refuse to hand out a Creator Award, which it has done to select channels with horror or political content as well as various critics.
Tier and Perks of Non-Physical Awards
- Graphite- Channels that reach or surpass 100 subscribers. It allows a creator to have a custom username and URL such as youtube.com/channel/Example instead of a random string of letters.
- Opal- Channels that reach or surpass 1,000 subscribers. It is also one of three requirements to apply to the YouTube Partner Program for monetization, the other two being a minimum of 4,000 total viewer watch hours in the past 12 months and a review of the channel’s content to determine eligibility.
- Bronze- Channels that reach or surpass 10,000 subscribers.
Physical Creator Awards
A verified YouTube channel reaches a specific milestone and is deemed eligible for a YouTube Creator Reward. They are awarded with a relatively flat trophy in a metal casing with a YouTube play button symbol. The trophies are of different sizes: each button and plaque gets progressively bigger with the channel’s subscriber count.
The Silver and Gold awards were introduced at VidCon 2012, with the Diamond award being introduced at VidCon 2015. The Creator Awards are made by the New York firm, Society Awards.
Tiers of Physical Awards
- The Silver Creator Award or Silver Play Button- Channels that reach or surpass 100,000 subscribers.
- The Gold Creator Award or Gold Play Button- Channels that reach or surpass one million subscribers.
- The Diamond Creator Award or Diamond Play Button- Channels that reach or surpass ten million subscribers. When introduced, 35 channels qualified for the award.
- The Ruby Creator Award- This award is for creators with over 50 million subscribers. This criterion is not included in the Creators Awards page. This award is not given to creators, as these accounts may mostly belong to companies or artists.
- The Red Diamond Creator Award- Channels that reach or surpass 100 million subscribers. Inspired by the Diamond Creator Award, it features a play button triangle with a large dark red crystal. It is also absent from the Creators Awards page. There are currently three channels that have reached this level.