Swedish YouTube creator PewDiePie has dominated the video sharing platform for years, famed for his popular Let’s Play commentaries, comedic vlogs and meme reviews.
PewDiePie – real name Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg – was one of the first YouTubers to show how home made videos could lead to a lucrative career, inspiring many aspiring influencers to fire up their own webcams.
However, the 29-year-old video game commentator needs to stay on his toes if he wants his channel to remain the most subscribed on YouTube.
Indeed, on Friday (February 22) PewDiePie was kicked off the top spot, with Indian channel T-Series enjoying the most subscribers on YouTube for around eight minutes.
A spokesperson from SocialBlade – a website which tracks social media analytics – gave a statement to Mashable explaining how the Bollywood music video channel briefly overtook the mighty PewDiePie in terms of subscribers.
Prior to this, PewDiePie has been the most subscribed YouTube channel for an incredible five years.
The spokesperson said:
For roughly 8 minutes, as a result of a YouTube audit, T-Series was ahead of PewDiePie (by a max of about 2000 [subscribers]).
Mashable reported how an automated audit hit PewDiePie’s account on the date in question, causing him to lose an approximate 20,000 subscribers. This proved to be an opportune moment for T-Series, letting them leap ahead for less than 10 minutes.
Addressing his fans in a video entitled ‘We lost?’ PewDiePie said:
YouTube – those sly son of a guns! – decided to delete 20,000 subscribers immediately from my channel.
The sub gap was at 22,000 and then very quickly, they took over! T-Series actually passed PewDiePie in subscribers for ten minutes. Ten excruciatingly painful minutes.
But it was necessary. Because now they got a taste of what it means to be number one. And that’s all you’re ever going to get, T-Series!
T-Series is a Bollywood music focused channel, which believes ‘Music can change the world’.
According to the T-Series channel description:
T-Series is India’s largest Music Label & Movie Studio, believes in bringing world close together through its music.
T-Series is associated with music industry from past three decades, having ample catalogue of music comprising plenty of languages that covers the length & breadth of India. We believe after silence, nearest to expressing the inexpressible is Music.
So, all the music lovers who believe in magic of music come join us and live the magic of music with T-Series.
PewDiePie appears as confident as ever, but could we soon be seeing a change of power in the YouTube kingdom?
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Jules studied English Literature with Creative Writing at Lancaster University before earning her masters in International Relations at Leiden University in The Netherlands (Hoi!). She then trained as a journalist through News Associates in Manchester. Jules has previously worked as a mental health blogger, copywriter and freelancer for various publications.