T-Series has just surpassed Pewdiepie as the most subscribed channel on YouTube and here’s why it’s a big deal!
The subscriber race is getting tight between T-series and Pewdiepie and here’s why people are talking about it! Pewdiepie is the YouTuber who has reigned as the most-subscribed channel since August 15th 2013. Despite a small challenge from YouTube Spotlight, which dethroned him for 46 days in late 2013, Pewdiepie has maintained his top status since December 22, 2013.
The channel has over 68 million subscribers as of October 2018 and the channel has received over 18 billion video views. T-Series, however, is now challenging that title.
T-Series, for those who don’t know, is a powerful Bollywood music record label and film production company. Its YouTube channel shows mostly music videos and film trailers and has over 51 billion views and over 67 million subscribers. In addition, T-Series has a multi-channel network including 27 online properties, which has gained over 93 million subscribers and 61.5 billion views.
What’s most impressive, though is how quickly T-Series has gained followers. In 2018, the company gained 40.3 million subscribers, bringing the channel extremely close to PewDiePie. Though as T Series continued to make progress, Pewdiepie seemed to give up the fight.
Pewdiepie’s main concern, rather, was that corporations could be taking over the platform, replacing channels like his, which are just one person connecting directly to their fans. But even if Pewdiepie stopped worrying- his fans did not.
Fans of the Pewdiepie started reporting the T-Series channel and leaving bad comments and down votes for the videos. One fan in particular decided to rally the troops and fight back.
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MrBeast said, “Our Lord Pewdiepie is under attack, his regime is being questioned. Are we just going to sit back and let him be taken over? NO! We will fight, I’m calling all the kids of the internet, let’s save Pewdiepie before it’s too late.” With the clock ticking, Mr Beast had no time to lose.
Thanks to his fan’s efforts, Pewdiepie defied the expectation that T-series would surpass him on October 29. In fact, by November 2nd, Pewdiepie pulled ahead of T-Series by 700,000 subscribers.
Neeraj Kalyan, President, T-Series, who also heads the Digital division said: “It’s a matter of pride for all Indians that an Indian YouTube Channel will soon be world’s biggest channel on YouTube. But it seems a set of overzealous PewDiePie fans are negatively spamming T-Series channel on YouTube. I would like to inform them that we are not perturbed by this kind of behaviour.
T-Series is a well-respected platform for Indian music and promoting new talent is part of our DNA. We will continue to build and grow our fan base globally. No amount of spamming will be able to hold back the power of good music.”
T-Series was founded by Gulshan Kumar in 1983 as a small company started selling pirated Bollywood songs and then began creating original content. In 1997, Kumar was murdered by the Indian mafia. The company was taken over by Gulshan’s son Bhushan and younger brother Krishan.
T-Series joined YouTube in 2006, but only started uploading videos in late 2010. In January–July 2018, T-Series earned an income of(US$100 million) from YouTube. The rapid growth of the channel is attributed to India’s fast growing online users.
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The online growth increased to around 500 million internet users, which represents a third of the country’s overall population. There is a lack of local content creators, which is why T-Series has become so important to Indian youtube subscribers.
In contrast, Felix Kjellberg started his YouTube channel in 2010 and started posting videos where he commented on video games. He grew in popularity thanks to his friendly and comedic nature and gained a following that began to call itself the “Bro Army” . The name came from Pewdiepie’s “bro fist” he did at the end of his videos.
As he grew in popularity, he began making more general entertainment content. Pewdiepie has no oversight and thus has run into some dark and hateful controversies, most notably losing a deal with Disney in 2017 over anti-semitic jokes that appeared in his videos.
The Pewdiepie channel continued to grow rapidly and as it started looking toward 50 million subscribers, Pewdiepie played a prank on his subscribers. He said if he hit 50 million he would delete his channel. However, when he did hit 50 million… he deleted the Jack Septiceye channel instead.
It caused a lot of drama, but like the old adage goes… all press is good press, right? The Pewdiepie vs T-Series race is not just about two channels duking it out.
It brings up a larger examination of massive companies coming up against the platform’s native stars, who largely operate independently. YouTube traditionally has been an escape for those who don’t want to go the corporate route.
And with its evolution, it has become arguably more popular and more influential than traditional television.
This of course makes companies want to take advantage of the platform as well, but as corporations grow within the YouTube structure, will this force independent creators to look elsewhere?
And we don’t want to get too Chicken Little, but if independent creators go off YouTube… Will YouTube cease to exist as we know it??
What do you think? And are you team Pewdiepie or Team T-Series? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter at @WhatsTrending.
