YouTube king PewDiePie will soon surrender his crown
Ascent of Indian record label T-Series shocks tight community of online personalities
YouTube is about to crown a new king.
T-Series Pvt., one of India’s largest record labels, will become the most-subscribed-to channel on the world’s most popular video site in the next couple of weeks. At the beginning of the year, the company had 30 million fans, fewer than half of the following for No. 1 PewDiePie, the Swedish videogame geek and jokester whose real name is Felix Kjellberg.
The company’s ascent has shocked the tight-knit community of online personalities, prompting some to rally behind PewDiePie and delay T-Series’ ascent. While claiming the most subscribers on YouTube is largely a symbolic achievement, and the company already has the most monthly views, the end of PewDiePie’s fiveyear reign is a watershed that reflects important changes as internet use gets more global.
More than half of the 10 most popular channels on YouTube in terms of monthly views are from outside the U.S., and many of them belong to professional media companies. YouTube’s previous champions have been young, male amateurs like the video blogger Ray William Johnson and comedy duo Smosh. But after years as a mostly western site for pranks and cat clips, the Google-owned company has lured most of the world’s largest media giants to the site, blurring the line between professional and amateur.
That’s opened the door for Noida, India-based T-Series, which operates 29 channels and boasts more than 100 mil- lion combined YouTube subscribers. Its flagship, also called T-Series, has been adding three million subscribers a month and will be the first nonEnglish-language channel to hit No. 1.
“This digital era is fantastic,” Bhushan Kumar, T- Series’ chief executive officer, said in an interview. “It’s here to stay. It’s giving us popularity. It’s giving us recognition.”
T-Series was founded in 1984 by the CEO’s father, Gulshan Dua. The son of a Delhi juice vendor, Dua started making money by producing and selling cassettes. Though dogged by rumours he was pirating music, Dua, who later adopted the family name Kumar, turned a mom-and-pop shop into a conglomerate that sold CDs and home electronics.
The company achieved its breakout success with the soundtrack to Aashiqui, a Hindi musical romance that is still one of the bestselling records in the history of India. Bollywood soundtracks account for more than half of the Indian music market and still serve as the foundation of T-Series.
“T-Series used to cater to a much older generation, but it is making movie content and music videos to capture a younger generation,’’ said Allison Stern, chief marketing officer at Tubular Labs, a research firm that tracks online video. “It mirrors what a lot of media companies are doing in the U.S.”
Tragedy struck in 1997 when the T-Series founder, then 42, was murdered after refusing to pay extortion to an organized crime group linked to an infamous gangster, according to reports, and his son took over. The younger Kumar demonstrated a knack for picking the right soundtracks and pushed the company deeper into movie production.
“Bollywood music is like Russian roulette,” said T-Series President Neeraj Kalyan, who joined the company shortly before the murder and has worked as Bhushan Kumar’s deputy for two decades. “You keep on betting, but you don’t know what will be a hit.”
In 1999, Kalyan was asked to look after T-Series’ music exports. CD sales started to fall as consumers began downloading pirated music. While online stores like iTunes ultimately re- placed CD sales in many Western countries, that first wave of e-commerce bypassed India. The only way music companies made money online was by selling ring tones.
T-Series started uploading videos to YouTube in 2011. Growth was slow at first, but the company surpassed one million subscribers in 2012, one of the first channels in India to do so. Then came the Indian mobile miracle. In 2016, Reliance Industries Ltd. launched its modern wireless network and slashed prices for internet access. In just a few years, Indian data use soared. Online video consumption exploded, and nobody has benefited more than YouTube. Today, YouTube has more than 300 channels in India with more than a million subscribers each. The company announced its first slate of shows there. India is now YouTube’s secondlargest market in views and first in users.
T-Series now posts all of its music on YouTube first, investing huge sums in videos that help promote its movies and spur song sales. YouTube now accounts for 20 to 25 per cent of T-Series’ sales, which are nearing $100 million (U.S.).
T-Series has thrived by taking advantage of India’s size and diversity. The country is home to hundreds of languages, including at least 13 spoken by more than 10 million people. T-Series operates 29 channels that offer videos in regional tongues and different music genres.
And while Bollywood remains the most popular genre, individual creators with no link to any movie are T-Series’ fastestgrowing segment.