Unless you’ve never used YouTube, you’ve probably heard of the user PewDiePie, otherwise known as Felix Kjellberg. The Swedish gamer has had the #1 subscribed channel for the last 5 years — the longest for any channel to stay on top. He first took the platform by storm in 2013 when he gained almost 16 million subscribers in a year; at that rate, Felix was gaining almost one subscriber a second. For years, he experienced little to no competition until early this summer.

The YouTube channel T-Series is an Indian music and movie company, created in 2006, four years before PewDiePie began his own. Starting in early 2017, T-Series began to gain around a million subscribers every month. This rate is only increasing; in the last 30 days the channel gained four million subscribers. Comparatively, PewDiePie gained just under one million subscribers in the same timeframe. Currently, PewDiePie has 67 million subscribers, and T-Seriesalso  has 67 million subscribers; the third most subscribed channel, Justin Bieber, has only 41 million subscribers in comparison. PewDiePie and T-Series are just over 100,000 subscribers apart, and at their current subscriber rates, T-Series should take first place within the month.

Although many people, especially Americans, are unfamiliar with the channel, the success of T-Series is no coincidence. T-Series is a company unlike PewDiePie in that they have tons of people working around the clock to make content, which results in more videos, more views, and more subscribers. T-Series is also very popular because of the category it falls into. Within the Top 50 YouTube channels, only 9 (including PewDiePie) are gaming channels, while 20 focus on music. Music is more universal and marketable on YouTube because people will listen to songs over and over, earning these videos a constant spot on the Trending page. How many times can someone watch a 20+ minute video of someone playing a game?

The other reason for the tremendous amount of growth T-Series has seen has to do with the growth of the internet in India. India has one of the fastest growth rates for people using the internet, with a projected 829 million users in 2021. This would double the amount of users in just three years.

PewDiePie has held the crown for years, but it looks like his reign may be over.