Sascha Pineau, WGSS GNN Entertainment Writer
YouTube has always been one of the world’s biggest and most popular sites on the Internet. PewDiePie, born Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, has been the most subscribed YouTuber on the site for a very long time. For the last several months, however, a channel has been on his tail.
T-Series is an Indian music record label and film production company founded by Gulshan Kumar in 1983. They have been blowing up on YouTube lately as YouTube’s users are worldwide. As of this article, T-Series is at 91,570,000 subscribers with PewDiePie 28,000 subscribers apart with 91,542,000 subscribers. With T-Series finally surpassing PewDiePie, this has been news that everyone is buzzing about.
PewDiePie first joined YouTube in 2006, where he usually posted gaming videos, giving up on the channel soon after due to forgetting his password. In 2012, he remembered his password and deleted his old videos to start again. T-Series joined YouTube in 2006 as well and ever since they have been catching up to PewDiePie, gaining about 100,000 subscribers a day. This massive boom of popularity has led to them achieving the title for most subscribed YouTube channel presently. The real question is, will PewDiePie be able to return as the King of YouTube? Or will he have to hand over his throne?
How did T-Series originally start out?
The founder of T-Series, Gulshan Kumar, was a juice seller in Delhi. T-Series was initially founded to sell pirated Bollywood music before branching off to produce it’s own. Their first “Big Hit” was with the publishing of the soundtrack from 1988 blockbuster, Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (in English meaning “From Doom to Doom”). This came to be as the best selling Indian music album of the 1980s. However, in 1997, Gulshan Kumar was murdered by Mumbai mafia syndicate D-Company. Since then, T-Series has been run by his son Bhushan Kumar and his brother Krishan Kumar.
How did PewDiePie originally start out?
Felix made a YouTube account in 2010 while at university under the alias ‘PewDiePie’ in 2010. The following year, he dropped out due to losing interest in his degree. When his parents found out, it caused much dismay. After failing an apprenticeship with an advertising agency in Scandinavia, he decided to focus on YouTube instead. To fund for his new interest in the site, he worked at a hot-dog stand and sold his Photoshop art projects. Over the years after starting to put almost all of his work into YouTube, he rapidly received recognition online and in July 2012, he hit 1,000,000 (one million) subscribers.
In 2013, he became the most subscribed YouTube channel but was briefly passed by YouTube Spotlight before coming back and taking the lead. He has been the most subscribed YouTuber since December 23rd, 2013. The next year (exactly 1 year and 6 days later), he became the most viewed YouTube channel all the way to Mid-February 2017. As of February 2019, he is the 8th most viewed channel on the platform at 20 billion views. That’s more views than people on this planet!
What have people done to support PewDiePie?
While supporters of T-Series tended to be more passive with their support, PewDiePie supporters really ran the extra mile in efforts to bring the King to the top.
YouTuber MrBeast has made it his goal to keep PewDiePie as the ‘bulldog’ or ‘top dog’ of the platform. To help out PewDiePie, he has exceeded expectations and done many jaw-dropping acts to help PewDiePie regain his crown. He donated money to people, telling them to subscribe – even donating to the thousands from his own adsense savings. With his influence, other YouTubers have started doing the same. Team 10 member Justin Roberts bought a 1 million dollar billboard in Time Square with “Subscribe to PewDiePie” on it. This mirrors one of the biggest things MrBeast has done to advertise PewDiePie was going to the 2019 NFL Superbowl with a huge sign that said, ‘SUB2PEWDIEPIE’ with some of his friends that also appear in his videos. (MrBeast’s ad on the left and Justin Roberts’s ad on the right).
