Picture Courtesy: Yeshi Lhendup Films
With over 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, Yeshi Lhendup Films becomes the country’s first YouTube channel to receive the Silver Creator Award or Play Button from YouTube. One hundred thousand subscribers will get a silver play button while one million subscribers will get gold and hitting ten million subscribers will get a diamond play button. YouTube’s play buttons also known as creator awards are a reward given to content creators who reach a certain number of subscribers as being recognised by YouTube.
The silver play button or creator award is a relatively flat trophy in a metal casting with a YouTube play button symbol. The awards are based on a channel’s subscriber count but are awarded at the sole discretion of YouTube. Each channel is reviewed before an award is issued. Receiving the creator award yesterday, Yeshi Lhendup said crossing a hundred thousand subscribers is a dream come true.
“Receiving this award is like encouragement for us and even to those new YouTubers who are thriving and who are trying hard to make contents every time and every day. We are hopeful that we will encourage them as well. On YouTube, there are so many channels and after receiving this silver play button or reaching 100,000 subscribers, it becomes authentic and it becomes legit that our YouTube channel is original and it provides original contents. It also helps us to reach more audience,” he said.
Subscribing to a YouTube channel is a convenient way to receive instant updates from and keep track of ones favourite YouTubers. Having more subscribers means delivering the content to a wide audience. But Yeshi said, as a content creator, one of the challenges is not many are aware of the importance of subscribing to a YouTube channel.
“In other countries, people when they watch YouTube videos, they usually subscribe to the channel after watching the video. But in Bhutan, most of the audiences watch the video but they never subscribe. We always get stuck at a certain point after reaching 10,000 or 20,000, the subscriber never changes but the views count always increases. So one of the challenges is that viewers or audiences are not aware that they need to subscribe to the YouTube channel. It won’t cost anything but it would be an encouragement for the content creators,” he added.
Drawing the brand name from his own name, Yeshi Lhendup Films is the highest viewed and popular entertainment account in the country today. Since he dropped his first official music video in 2017, his YouTube channel has more than 80 videos today. The music videos are popular and successful because of photography and visual quality. Through his films and music videos, viewers are also introduced to young talents.
Sonam Pem