PewDiePie vs T-Series: Swedish vlogger briefly dethroned by Indian music label as YouTube's most subscribed channel

T-Series temporarily toppled Swedish YouTube personality PewDiePie aka Felix Kjellberg as the most subscribed YouTube channel. According to News18 , on 18 March, the Indian movie and music label had 50,000 more followers than Kjellberg and retained the lead in the Great Subscriber War for more than two hours.

Kjellberg and T Series have amassed more than 90 million subscribers on their respective YouTube channel. But the battle began when both channels were around the 67 million mark in October 2018. Recently Bhushan Kumar, the chairman and managing director of T-Series, posted a video on Twitter,  appealing the Indian crowd  to subscribe to its channel with the #BharatWinsYouTube campaign.

Many Bollywood personalities, including Varun Dhawan, Sonakshi Sinha, Salman Khan as well as singers like Neha Kakkar and Armaan Mallik, have shared their support for T-Series.

This development comes days after PewDiePie was named by the New Zealand mosque gunman in his Facebook livestream. “Remember lads, subscribe to PewDiePie,” he had said before going on the rampage that killed 50 people. The phrase “subscribe to PewDiePie” is a reference popular among the YouTuber star’s fans, writes  Rolling Stone .

In a tweet, Kjellberg responded that he was “absolutely sickened” that the shooter had taken his name. He also extended his condolences to the victims and their families.