India’s T-Series becomes first channel to break 100mn subscribers, beating old rival PewDiePie

The epic rivalry between the two biggest channels on YouTube hit a critical point on Wednesday when Indian label T-series surpassed 100 million subscribers, beating long-time Swedish YouTube king PewDiePie to the milestone.

Announcing their victory on Twitter, T-Series proclaimed its title as “the world’s biggest YouTube Channel,” boasting billions of views on top of its now nine-digit subscriber counter.

PewDiePie, whose channel was still hanging around the 96 million mark as T-series passed 100 million on Wednesday, has yet to offer any comment regarding his opponent’s latest monumental victory.

Although PewDiePie (aka Felix Kjellberg) had maintained a solid lead on the video-sharing website for the last five years, T-Series rapidly amassing subscriber count began to threaten his reign last October, with both sides surpassing 90 million subscribers within hours of each other this March.

When the Indian record label and movie trailer company finally did manage a solid lead, Pew released a “celebratory” music video marketing the occasion… “celebratory” in the loosest sense of the word, as the video accuses the company of profiting off of piracy and of connections to the mafia, and it repeatedly made what could charitably be called lewd insults.

Uncharitably, the remarks could be called “abusive, vulgar and also racist,” which is how they were dubbed by the Delhi high-court, after T-series issued legal complaints over the diss-track. After the court had the video blocked across India and Pew faced serious backlash for his alleged racism, he decided to visit India himself at the beginning of the month to record a “redemption song.”

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