Super Cassettes Industries, doing business as T-series is known as India’s biggest music record label. Founded by Gulshan Kumar on 11th July 1983, the brand has become the largest music house with 35% shares of the Indian music market. On YouTube, T-series has the highest number of subscribers in the world. As of now, it has crossed 200M subscribers on YouTube and many music videos released on this channel have crossed the 1 billion views benchmark. With growth, the music giant has also started a film production company. Besides, T-series has a total of more than 361 million subscribers across 30 channels on YouTube including the regional ones- Hindi, Bhojpuri, Tamil, Telegu, Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, and Rajasthani.
History:
Gulshan Kumar used to be a fruit juice seller in the Daryaganj neighborhood o Delhi. He founded the T-Series initially to sell pirated copies of Bollywood songs. At that time, the cassettes market was large ad consumer-driven. There were some loopholes in the copyright laws that the company took advantage of. It took just a few months for the T-Series to become the most popular pirate in the music market. Gulshan Kumar observed that there was a potential market for devotional music. And many people after a certain age are incapable of reading religious books or hymns. He found music to be the best way to concentrate the audience on his channel. The first original released by T-Series was for Lallu Ram in 1984, with music scored by Ravindra Jain. Well, the company got its first blockbuster through the album from the movie ‘Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak’, directed by Mansoor Khan. Tseries became the leading music house with the release of an album from Aashiqui which sold over 20 million copies. After the death of Gulshan Kumar, assassinated by Mumbai mafia syndicate D-Company, Bhushan Kumar with the help of Gulshan took the responsibility upon his shoulder.
At Present:
After Bhushan took charge T-series has seen and is still seeing astounding growth in the world music market. From India’s biggest music marketer to World’s #no.1 YouTube channel, T-Series is now this prestigious tags-holder. It has been able to deliver some of the best albums to Bollywood music and the audiences of India. Although as a Film Production Company the music leader could not see great success. Most of its movies have received some average or bad reviews from the audience. Yet, to date, the movie ‘Hindi Medium’ was their biggest success, directed by Saket Choudhary, starring Irfan Khan. T-series produced movies like ‘Saaho’, starring South Indian star Pravas and also planned to make a biopic on Gulshan Kumar which was supposed to be released in 2019 but put on hold for some untold reasons.
YouTube presence:
The YouTube channel of t-series ranks now the number 1 in terms of subscribers and views. By July 2013 the house crossed the 1 billion views and became the second d to do so after Rajshri Production. About 40% of the channels’ traffic comes from different countries outside India. Audiences from the United States amounted to be 12% of the total viewers of T-series. Nevertheless, the majority of the channel’s overseas viewers come from the South Asian Diaspora. In the last year, there was a contest between T-series and PewDiePie for the highest numbers of subscribers, however, soon T-Series won for its rich and consistent music content and became the first channel to hit 100 million subscribers. The T-Series YouTube channel is mainly run by a team of 13 people. T-Series now understanding the demand of the public has been more involved in remaking the hit songs of the ‘90s. Songs like Dilbar (2018) have created a buzz after its release. Many individual artists have become big with their songs through the music channel. Artists like Guru Randhawa, Dhvani Bhanushali with the songs ‘Lahore’, and ‘Vaaste’ respectively became bigger.
Business:
The diversified YouTube channels across several languages have effectively brought the makers and runners the revenue they expected. Consistency in making music and releasing them shows the results on their financial report as well. The report also says that in the year 2019 the revenue of T-Series was more than 1000 cr. However, the online revenue contributes the 60% of the overall revenue approximately.
Legal Issues:
In November 2007, a lawsuit was filed against YouTube by T-Series for infringing of copyright of the music as YouTube allowed the users to use their music and upload videos on the platform for free. Even in 2019, it filed a lawsuit in Delhi High Court against PewDiePie for releasing two tracks that were abusive to the music company. In August 2019, it was reported they settled the issue, and the videos were deleted from YouTube.
Follow T- Series on various social Media Profiles:
https://www.facebook.com/tseriesmusic