On Sunday, at Pier 36 in New York City, YouTube hosted the YouTube Music Awards, a celebration of music honoring the artists and songs that YouTube fans have turned into global hits over the past year. Unlike traditional award shows, this event presented live performances by top artists, alongside some of YouTube's biggest stars, including Arcade Fire, Avicii, CDZA, Earl Sweatshirt, Eminem, Lady Gaga, Lindsey Stirling, M.I.A., Tyler, The Creator and Walk off the Earth.

In the run up to the YouTube Music Awards, four music events were also streamed from around the world on YouTube from Seoul, Moscow, London and Rio.

Eminem won the Artist of the Year award. Video of the Year was awarded to Girls' Generation, who are megastars in South Korea but are still making inroads into the U.S. music scene.

Breakthrough of the Year went to hip-hop duo Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, whose songs include the gay rights anthem, "Same Love."

Walk off the Earth, along with KRNFX, took the Phenomenon Award for their version of Taylor Swift's "I Knew You Were Trouble," while the Innovation Prize went to DeStorm, who won for "See Me Standing."

The inaugural YouTube awards reflect an increasing trend for people to turn to the internet, rather than television and radio, for music and video.