Recently, T-series captured the place for the most subscribed channel on youtube with 92 million + subscribers. PewDiePie even released a song on his channel named Congratulation, which is another trick. T series is the most viewed channel on YouTube since early 2017.
While I was writing this article, PewDiePie’s song ‘Congratulations’ which was a diss-track made PewDiePie win again. It was his marketing tactic. Still, this article is relevant enough. This article will be unbiased and cover everything that I am aware of. It includes all the things that you should consider before supporting any one of the two.
T-series: Brief
T-series (or, Super Cassette Industry Private Limited) is the biggest music record label in India. On YouTube, it has 29 channels run by a team of 13 people and them guys have around 178 million subscribers combined from their 29 channels. The channel mainly has Bollywood songs and film trailers. They upload several videos every day. The gained the title for being the most watched channel on YouTube on Feb 2017. And currently, they have around 66 billion views. This channel surpassed the ex-most subscribed channel, PewDiePie on the video sharing platform on 27 March 2019.
PewDiePie: Brief
Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, the person called PewDiePie, is a Swedish who makes comedy videos and Let’s play commentaries videos. On 15 Aug 2015, he became the world’s most subscribed youtube channel. 29 December 2014 to 14 February 2017, his channel was the most viewed channel on youtube.
T-series: History
Founded by Gulshan Kumar on 11 July 1983, T-series initially sold pirated Bollywood songs. Later, it started releasing original music. At that time, Gulshan Kumar noticed that most elderly Hindu people could not read hymns and chants because of failing eyesight. So, he hired singers to record the songs and sell them at cheap prices. Later, he filmed major Hindu pilgrimages in India and sold them on VHS and video cassettes tapes.
The company released the soundtrack for the Bollywood movie, Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (QSQT), which proved as a breakthrough for the company. The soundtrack became the best selling soundtrack the 1980s. T-Series founder Gulshan Kumar soon played a key role in Bollywood’s cassette boom of the late 1980s with his affordable T-Series albums. Its founder believed that “Music can change the world”.
PewDiePie: History
He failed to earn an apprenticeship with an advertising company in Scandinavia. Then, decided to make content I youtube. To fund his videos, he began selling prints of his Photoshop art projects and worked at a hot dog stand. He gathered many subscribers and in July 2012, he got 1 million subscribers. Kjellberg loved photo manipulation using Photoshop rather than going to school.
T-series: Activism
Due to the controversial actions of the fans of PewDiePie, the rivalry between PewDiePie and T-series-series got much attention in India. PewDiePie released a diss-track named ‘Bitch Lasagna’ which contained dis-respectful lyrics against not only T-series-series but also India, which us Indians found really offensive. Many of the PewDiePie fans were found trolling the T-series-series channel by dropping dis-respectful comments, disliking their videos and filing false reports against it. Many PewDiePie fans have also been seen making anti-endian comments using racial slurs.
Some Indians are in the support of T-series, like Jus Reign, an Indian-Canadian comedian, and YouTuber. He made a video called ‘In defense of T-series’. Some more Indian YouTubers have made diss-track against PewDiePie’s ‘Bitch Lasagna’ diss-track. Carry Minati, (Ajey Nagar) is a gaming and roasting YouTuber who uploaded a diss-track named ‘Bye PewDiePie’, which got over 5 million views in a day.
Tatva K released a diss-track named ‘Pew Ki Pie’. Asif Bantaye released another diss-track named ‘PENDUBHAI’. A channel named Abby Viral also released another diss-track titled, ‘You PewDiePie You Lose!’.
PewDiePie: Activism
PewDiePie’s support is quite strong. MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson) was the first prominent YouTuber to support PewDiePie. He bought billboard and radio advertisements to support him. Other prominent YouTubers who voiced their support for PewDiePie include Markiplier, Jacksepticeye and Logan Paul with their tweets and videos having the slogan ‘Subscribe to PewDiePie’.
All the support stated above is okay but then comes hacking. Yes, PewDiePie fans even hack printers to print messages saying ‘Subscribe To PewDiePie’. Even 65,000 Google Chromecasts was hacked to display a message on people’s TV saying subscribe to PewDiePie. And that’s not all, The Wall Street Journal’s website was hacked to display a message apologizing for the article accusing PewDiePie of anti-Semitism and to tell readers to subscribe to his Chanel.
Another hacker even took down the T-series-series’ website. Bob Buckhorn, the mayor of Tampa, Florida had his Twitter account hacked and malicious tweets are posted, one of them was to encourage people to subscribe to PewDiePie.
A user on PewDiePie subreddit made ransomware that encrypted windows files and asked the user to subscribe to PewDiePie to unlock their files. It also said that if T-series-series reached the milestone before PewDiePie their data will be deleted.
The support doesn’t even end up in hacking, it goes further. The UK Independence Party declared their support for PewDiePie in a tweet. In Tallinn, Estonia, PewDiePie fans marched around some busy areas of the city center to show their support for PewDiePie. The same day, a basketball club called Zalgiris based in Kaunas, Lithuania had cheerleaders cheering on ‘Bitch Lasagna’ (the PewDiePie’s diss-track against T-series).
During the India-Pakistan standoff 2019, T-series removed songs from Pakistani artists from its Channel. In response to this, there were marches in Pakistan saying people to unsubscribe from T-series, which directly means support to PewDiePie.
Lastly, there are even criminal acts done to support PewDiePie, like the Brooklyn War Memorial was damaged by the king a graffiti saying ‘Subscribe to PewDiePie’. In the recent incident of the Christchurch mosque shooting in New Zealand, the attacker said, “Remember lads, subscribe to PewDiePie” during his live stream.
T-series: Response
In September 2018, Neeraj Kalyan, head of digital division at T-series, said that “It’s a matter of pride for all Indians that an Indian YouTube Channel will soon be world’s biggest channel on YouTube”.
He so responded to PewDiePie’s followers saying “No amount of spamming will be able to hold back the power of good music.” And in fact, due to this controversy and subscriber race people in many countries in the ease and west are getting to know more about T-series and Indian culture. Late Gulshan Kumar’s Son Bhushan Kumar told BBC in an interview that he hadn’t even heard of PewDiePie a few months ago.
He added that he is not really bothered about the race and followed up by saying that he doesn’t know why PewDiePie is taking this so seriously. On 6 March 2019, in a tweet, Bhushan Kumar said, “on the brink of becoming the world’s biggest @YouTube channel. We can make history.
We can make India win. Subscribe to @TSeries” with a video in which he stated that “This is a historic movement for all of us, so let’s come together and subscribe to T-Series YouTube channel and make India proud.” PewDiePie responded to it, saying T-series is becoming desperate.
PewDiePie : Response
In Aug 2018, PewDiePie released a video with a title ‘this channel will overtake PewDiePie’, where he jokingly rallied his fans against T-Series. On Oct 018, he released his diss-track against T-series titled ‘Bitch Lasagna’ where he insulted T-series and India. Next, PewDiePie said in an interview that he doesn’t care about T-series and said that youtube gives more benefits and support to big corporations than individual YouTubers.
On 2 December 2018, T-series subscriber counts neared that of PewDiePie rapidly. PewDiePie tweets “It looks like this is it bois.”. Next day, PewDiePie released a video telling his viewers to support an Indian NGO named Child Rights And You. This was to make his Indian fans happy as he had previously hunted their nationalist sentiments. He donated ￡173,682 including a donation from a Minecraft creator.
He also ran a charity stream the next day. In an attempt to be ahead of T-series, PewDiePie did many gaming streams of Fortnite, Roblox, and Minecraft. In response to the attacker of the Christchurch mosque shooting incident saying people to subscribe to PewDiePie in the live stream of the attack, PewDiePie said that he was absolutely sickened having heard that the attacker uttered his name. He added that his thoughts and heart go out to the victims of the attack.
On 31 March 2019, when T-series dethroned PewDiePie from #1 spot, he made another diss track, named ‘Congratulations’. This song eventually did what it was meant for, I mean this song was to gain subscribers to beat T-series again. And this actually happened this diss-track, made PewDiePie the #1 again.
What The Media Says
- According to some media sources, they say that T-series is a multi-channel network and can create several videos a day, but PewDiePie is a standalone channel. But some still argue that T-series has only 13 workers at their HQ and that PewDiePie also has his team and supporters.
- The Guardian describes T-series as ‘A Challenger From The Streets Of Delhi’ because his founder Gulshan Kumar was a fruit juice seller.
- The Verge compared their rivalry as KSI vs Logan Paul YouTube boxing match
- The Washington Post described the success of T-series as the growth in a number of internet users in India. The number, reportedly, increased from 20 million to 560 million. It is also noted that India is the second largest smartphone market in 2018.
What I Think About The Rivalry
This battle is mostly one-sided because most efforts are put in by PewDiePie while T-series still focuses o their work. The diss-tracks made by Carry Minati and others were their own ideas and not T-series’. Next, I guess that this matter hadn’t been so serious if PewDiePie in his diss-track didn’t give slangs to Indians. PDP got much more support from other YouTubers than T-series because its content is in English but since T-series has its content in Hindi is mostly watched by Indians.
In his new diss-track, PewDiePie has again given slangs to Indians about our caste system, poverty, and that we have poo-poo in our head. I just want to advice PewDiePie that don’t involve Indians between your rivalry against T-series. It should also be kept in mind that PewDiePie fans have done many wrongdoings and crimes like hacking. But it also should not be ignored that T-series started its business by selling pirated Bollywood songs, and there have been cases where T-series’ chairman and MD were raided by Income Tax officers.
But Who’s the Winner?
I think that the winner of the entire rivalry of PewDiePie and T-series will be channels that earn money from that content related to the rivalry. If you go to YouTube then you’ll see several videos explaining the rivalry, these video makers get great sums of money because these type of videos get more views because most people today want to know what the whole matter is.
If you search for T-series or PewDiePie then you’ll definitely see some live streams going on which will be the Live Subs Count. These Live Subs Count videos have 100-1000 live viewers, just think about the money.
For a better example, you opened this article thread about the matter because of its trending. The whole idea about the first diss-track against T-series was of PewDiePie because he thought he’d get more subscribers from that video itself. And, yes, it happened the video got more than 150 Million views. But this angered the Indians. Let’s see what happens next.
