Bollywood Label T-Series Tops PewDiePie’s YouTube Subscriber Count — But Only for a Moment

Team Bollywood briefly beat out PewDiePie for YouTube supremacy today — only to hand back the lead moments later.

In case there’s any doubt about the importance that music wields on YouTube…

Earlier today, Indian label T-Series briefly re-claimed its top subscriber count on YouTube from PewDiePie.  But the victory was short-lived, and part of an ongoing epic battle between the pair.

As of this (late Wednesday) writing, the T-Series YouTube channel counted 90,393,492 subscribers.  PewDiePie (aka Felix Kjellberg) claimed a larger 90,413,713 subs, with both steering towards the monstrous 100 million mark.

Grab some popcorn — but of course, this is a theater owned and operated by Google/Alphabet.  Sadly, T-Series’ monstrous subscriber count only underscores how powerful and important music remains on YouTube.  And, offers yet another reminder of just how paltry YouTube’s payouts to the industry and its rights owners remain.

PewDiePie has been egging on the contest for months, and loyalists of the Swedish vlogger have responded in kind.

The battle pits the lone PewDiePie against the T-Series Bollywood behemoth, a David vs. Goliath battle that spurred PewDiePie’s cause.  The charismatic Swedish vlogger quickly used that dynamic to his advantage, spinning a frenzied zeal to rally more subs.

Unfortunately, the fun-and-games turned tragic when a deranged gunman in New Zealand urged onlookers to ‘subscribe to PewDiePie’.  That was, of course, a serious buzzkill, though it couldn’t kill the ferocious back-and-forth.

As for T-Series, YouTube is just one part of this mega-company’s business model.

T-Series is a Bollywood juggernaut, with a catalog of more than 160,000 Bollywood soundtrack and Indian pop songs.

Back in January, T-Series inked a deal with Spotify ahead of its controversial launch across India.  Spotify noted that ‘Bollywood’ was easily its top search-term worldwide among fans interested in Indian music.  That’s undoubtedly a powerful search term on YouTube as well, and explains the extreme subscriber count for the T-Series channel.

“For us as a diasporic Indian community — to be able to find one place where we can listen to both the Western music we grew up with and the Eastern music that we relate to — this is so significant for lovers of this culture,” Spotify curator Himanshu Suri explained.

The Krishan Kumar-owned entertainment company first enjoyed top-ranked YouTube subscriber status in 2018, stealing the mantle from PewDiePie.  All of which led to the epic race we’re currently watching.