PewDiePie to be overtaken by T-Series as most popular YouTube channel

PewDiePie.
Getty

• Indian music channel T-Series is about to overtake
  PewDiePie as the most
  subscribed channel on YouTube.
• Research firm Tubular Labs has predicted that T-Series
  will overtake PewDiePie’s 67 million subscribers by Monday 29
  October.
• T-Series already has more views than the Swedish
  YouTuber.
• T-Series posts Indian music videos to its channel and
  is growing at a rapid clip, possibly thanks to India’s
  still-growing smartphone population.

PewDiePie, the Swedish vlogger known in real life as Felix
Kjellberg, has long been the most popular personality on YouTube.

Despite purported Nazi jokes and racist comments, PewDiePie has
racked up 67 million subscribers to his channel, making him the
most subscribed YouTuber of all time. It isn’t unusual for his
videos to garner anywhere between three and five million views a
few days after being posted.

But, according to analysis from Tubular, PewDie is likely to lose
that long-held top slot on Monday 29 October to T-Series, a
Bollywood channel with 66 million subscribers that most
Westerners have never heard of.

It already has more views than the Swedish YouTuber, but now it’s
on track to beat him in terms of numbers of subscribers.

T-Series/YouTube

T-Series isn’t an individual, like Kjellberg, but a Mumbai-based
film and entertainment company which has been around for decades.

According to this Motherboard profile of T-Series, the
company started out as an audio cassette firm and offers music
videos that go beyond Bollywood — which mostly consists of Hindi
songs — with regional languages such as Tamil.

T-Series’ YouTube channel comprises entirely Indian music videos.
Its most viewed video is the song “Lahore” by Punjabi singer Guru
Randhawa with 601 million views.

There are a few reasons T-Series has the advantage over
PewDiePie. Its channel is more prolific than PewDiePie’s, posting
six videos in the space of 24 hours versus two from PewDiePie. As
a one-man band, Kjellberg can’t keep up.

India also has a population of 1.3 billion people and, unlike
many Western markets,
smartphone adoption is still growing. The country remains
obsessed with Bollywood, and so it’s natural that new smartphone
owners would turn to YouTube to find their favourite hits. If
anything, it’s surprising a Bollywood-oriented channel took this
long to become the number one YouTuber.

As a result, T-Series is growing at a much faster clip than
PewDiePie. According to Tubular, the Bollywood channel gained 4.2
million subscribers in September. PewDiePie gained just 863,000.

PewDiePie has talked about the rivalry with T-Series, and
apparently expressed reservations that an “indie” YouTuber might
be supplanted by a corporate channel.

In a
video posted October 21, he said: “I don’t really care about
T-Series, I generally don’t, but I think if YouTube does shift in
a way where it does feel more corporate, then something else will
take its place. People enjoy this connection so much, I think
something else will show up if it becomes more corporate.”