James R | On 06, Nov 2018

PewDie and T-Series are continuing their heated battle to claim YouTube’s number one spot, as both giants of the online platform grow their following.

The Swedish vlogger Felix Kjellberg first began in 2010, going on to sign a deal with MCN Maker Studios in 2012. Since then, he has has raced past 1 million subscribers in 2012 and 43 million subscribers in 2016, with his Let’s Play commentaries and comedy rants growing an increasingly large audience. In 2013, he became the most subscribed YouTuber on the site, and in 2014, he become the most-viewed YouTube channel. While he was removed from Maker Studios in 2017 due to controversy surrounding a video with allegedly anti-Semitic content, he has since continued to grow its online presence.

His YouTube crown, though, is now facing some competition, as India’s largest music label T-Series looks set to surpass his channel. Projected to do so in late October, PewDiePie responded by releasing a diss track video titled “Bitch Lasagna”. At the same time, he has seen others root for him, with fellow YouTube Jimmy Donaldson hiring billboards to promote PewDiePie’s channel. That, along with a begging video published by the vlogger, has seen him become the first YouTube creator to hit 69 million subscribers.

Nonetheless, even as he aims for the 70 million threshold, T-Series continues to grow at pace: the channel has 68.78 million subscribers at the time of writing, and as a large corporation with its own movie studio, it seems only a matter of time until the reign of PewDiePie is over. According to TubeFilter, the Swede has added around 2.6 million subscribers in the last month, while T-Series has grown by 4 million.

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