T-Series

About

T-Series, also known as Super Cassettes Industries Private Limited, is an Indian film and music production company which gained much notoriety for its YouTube channel, which became the most-viewed and the second-most subscribed channel on the platform in August 2018, having the potential to overtake the most subscribed channel on the platform, Pewdiepie.

History

T-Series was founded by Gulshan Kumar Dua as a way to distribute and sell pirated Bollywood songs in 1983. By the 1990s, the company was distributing Bollywood film soundtracks, with its largest success at that time being the soundtrack for the Bollywood film Aashiqui. In 1997, Gulshan was killed by the Indian organized crime group D-Company. As of 2018, the company is led by his son Bhushan Kumar and Gulshan's younger brother Krishan Kumar.

In 2006, the company started up their Youtube channel on March 13th,^[1] the oldest video available on the channel being "Patiala House" Official Trailer 2 | Akshay Kumar", with over 492,000 views as of writing and uploaded on December 23, 2010 (shown below, left). Since then, the channel has uploaded over 12,000 videos to the channel as of 2018, with their most viewed video being "Guru Randhawa: Lahore (Official Video) Bhushan Kumar | Vee DirectorGifty | T-Series", uploaded on December 13, 2017 and with over 660 million views as of writing (shown below, right).

The company also has a network of 25 other channels available, such as T-Series Apna Punjab and T-Series Kids Hut with varying sub counts ranging from the hundred thousands to the millions. It is predicted that T-Series' main Youtube channel is set to surpass PewDiePie as the most subscribed Youtube channel on the site in a matter of months, with Socialblade predicting T-Series reaching 70 million subscribers in November 2018.

The company overtook number one most subscribed channel position on April 14th, 2019, following a month of back-and-forth lead changes. On April 15th, 2019, T-Series established a 100,000 subscriber lead over PewDiePie.

100 Million Subscribers Milestone

At approximately 5:50am EST, May 29th, 2019, T-Series became the first YouTube channel to reach 100 million subscribers. On the same day, T-Series announced the achievement in the company social media accounts, also updating the YouTube banner.^[2]

The news was covered by several notable news outlets, including LADbible^[3] and Independent.^[4]

Discussion Videos

In 2018, the channel garnered notoriety for it exponential rise on the site from numerous YouTubers, including Pyrocynical, who described PewDiePie in this situation as "one Swedish man against all of India" in response to the growth of T-Series (shown below, left). The video garnered over 1.4 million views. Another video from YouTuber Too cringy for MySpace was less of a discussion video and more of a parody, garnering over 6,000 views. (shown below, right).

On September 16th, PewDiePie uploaded a video discussing T-Series' rise in popularity titled "My Only Hope to Stop T-Series" (shown below, left). On September 20th, PewDiePie uploaded a video titled "T-series Exposed?" (shown below, right). Over the next month, both videos gained more than 5.4 million views.

Theories

A number of theories have been made as to T-Series increase in growth on Youtube, with some accusing the channel of view and sub bots on the channel, alongside remarking T-Series' disproportionate like-to-follower amount on Twitter. However, others have provided their own theories, such as attributing the rise to India's increasingly large online presence, with more and more Indians connecting to the internet. One video from channel Coffee Break discussed the latter and was uploaded on August 18, 2018. (shown below)

PewDiePie Diss Track

On October 5th, PewDiePie released a diss track directed to T-Series, which included lyrics referencing the bobs and vegana and bitch lasanga memes (shown below).

Search Interest

External References