YouTube Creator Awards



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. 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.

Benefit levels
These levels do not include physical and announcement awards but offer alternative benefits instead:
 * Graphite, for channels that reach or surpass 100 subscribers. It allows a creator to have a custom username and URL such as  instead of a random string of letters.
 * Opal, for 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. Channels with monetization can also enable Super Chat, while gaming channels can also enable channel membership.
 * Bronze, for channels that reach or surpass 10,000 subscribers. If a channel is monetized, this level adds a Teespring monetization option.

Awards
When a verified YouTube channel reaches a specific milestone and is deemed eligible for a YouTube Creator Reward, they are awarded 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.

There are currently three different tiers of rewards, plus a fourth and fifth that have been awarded a few times: • # PewDiePie (December 8, 2016)
 * YouTube Silver Play Button 2.svg The Silver Creator Award, for channels that reach or surpass 100,000 subscribers. The old version was made of nickel-plated cupronickel alloy. The new version (as of March 1, 2017) is 92% nickel, 5% carbon and 2.5% zinc, with traces of other metals. In March 2018, the look of the Silver Play Button was updated from a metal button housed within a window box with the channel's name printed on the front glass pane to a cleaner-looking flat designed metal plaque award featuring the channel's name embossed on it. Channels at this level are also eligible to apply for a digital verification badge.
 * YouTube Gold Play Button 2.svg The Gold Creator Award, for channels that reach or surpass one million subscribers. It is made of gold-plated brass. In March 2018, the look of the Gold Play Button was updated from a metal button housed within a window box with the channel's name printed on the front glass pane to a cleaner-looking flat designed metal plaque award featuring the channel's name embossed on it.
 * YouTube Diamond Play Button.svg The Diamond Creator Award, for channels that reach or surpass ten million subscribers. It is made of silver-plated metal inset with a large piece of colorless crystal in the shape of a play button triangle. When introduced, 35 channels qualified for the award. As of June 2020, there are 653 channels that have reached this level.
 * YouTube Ruby Play Button 2.svg The Custom Creator Award (or the Ruby Creator Award), for channels that reach or surpass 50 million subscribers. It is absent from the Creators Award page. There is no confirmation that every YouTuber who gets 50 million subscribers has received or will receive a Custom Creator Award, as channels that have reached this subscriber count are mostly owned by companies or music artists and as such have not revealed whether or not the award has been received. In addition, YouTube is growing in size constantly, and in time it will become less and less feasible for YouTube to have a custom-designed award created for each channel. As of November 2020, sixteen channels have reached this level, including:

• # T-Series (June 27, 2018)

• # 5-Minute Crafts (February 21, 2019)

• # Cocomelon (June 7, 2019)

• # SET India (June 20, 2019)

• # Canal Kondzilla (June 21, 2019)

• # WWE (October 24, 2019)

• # Justin Bieber (February 3, 2020)

• # Zee Music Company (February 7, 2020)

• # Like Nastya Vlog (March 13, 2020)

• # Dude Perfect (March 24, 2020)

• # Kids Diana Show (March 30, 2020)

• # Vlad and Niki (August 18, 2020)

• # Zee TV (September 2, 2020)

• # Blackpink (October 4, 2020)

• # Marshmello (November 22, 2020)
 * Creators who have already unveiled this award on their channel or any other accounts, officially given or received from YouTube.


 * YouTube Red Diamond Play Button.svg The Red Diamond Creator Award, for 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:


 * 1) T-Series (May 29, 2019)
 * 2) PewDiePie (August 25, 2019)
 * 3) Cocomelon (December 12, 2020)

Criticism
The awards are based on the number of subscribers. In an article in October 2019 TechCrunch reported "the number of subscribers" is a "metric that can be gamed by bots".