YouTube star PewDiePie is set to be dethroned next week as the platform’s biggest channel — by India’s T-Series, according to predictions
PewDiePie, whose real name is Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, has over 67.2 million subscribers and just under 19 billion views.
But T-Series already has far more views than PewDiePie — 51 billion — and is hot on his heels in terms of subscribers, with the channel’s figure sitting at 66.8million at the time of writing.
But what is T-Series? Unlike PewDiePie, who is a single person, T-Series is India’s largest music label and movie studio.
Its YouTube channel has the goal of “bringing the world close together through its music”. The channel’s “about” page says:
We believe after silence, nearest to expressing the inexpressible is Music. So, all the music lovers who believe in magic of music come join us and live the magic of music with T-Series.
The company behind T-Series was founded by Gulshan Kumar, but he was murdered in 1997 before the company started putting videos on YouTube.
Before his death, Kumar had worked on his company for two decades, starting it as an audio cassette company and then later pursuing the production of Bollywood films
One of the reasons why it’s expected that T-Series will dethrone PewDiePie is to do with its rapid increase with subscribers. According to research firm Tubular Labs (via Business Insider), in September T-Series gained 4.2 million subscribers, whereas PewDiePie only gained 863,000.
The video above is the channel’s most popular video. It was uploaded in December last year, but it has already gained over 600 million views.
PewDiePie was also in the news this week after his fiancée, Marzia Bisognin, announced she was leaving YouTube behind. She had been building her brand alongside PewDiePie for years but revealed she now wants to do something else.
In an emotional video she uploaded to her channel, she revealed that it was time to say goodbye so she could pursue projects that made her happy and feel good.
Felix hasn’t yet said anything about her decision to leave the platform, or about T-Series potentially being set to dethrone him as the most popular channel.