T-Series
Super Cassettes Industries Private Limited, doing business as T-Series, is an Indian record label and film studio founded by Gulshan Kumar on 11 July 1983. It is primarily known for Hindi film soundtracks and Indi-pop music. T-Series is the largest music record label in India, with up to a 35% share of the Indian music market. As of November 2025, T-Series also owns and operates the most-viewed and second most-subscribed YouTube channel, with over 307 million subscribers and 318 billion views. While best known as a music label, T-Series has also produced more than 100 films and established itself as a leading film production company in Hindi cinema.
Gulshan Kumar, initially a fruit juice seller in Delhi, founded T-Series to sell pirated Hindi songs before the company eventually began producing new music. Their breakthrough came with the soundtrack for the 1988 Bollywood blockbuster Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, composed by Anand–Milind, written by Majrooh Sultanpuri, and starring Aamir Khan and Juhi Chawla, which became one of the best-selling Indian music albums of the 1980s, with over 8 million sales.
T-Series further rose to prominence with the release of Aashiqui (1990), composed by Nadeem–Shravan, which sold 20 million copies and became the best-selling Indian soundtrack album of all time. Gulshan Kumar was murdered by the Mumbai mafia syndicate D-Company on 12 August 1997. Since then, the company has been led by his son Bhushan Kumar and younger brother Krishan Kumar.
History
T-Series was founded on 11 July 1983 by Gulshan Kumar, who was then a fruit juice seller in the Daryaganj neighborhood of Delhi. The company initially sold pirated Hindi film songs before releasing original music. At that time, the Indian audio cassette market was small-scale, with widespread piracy, but there was growing demand for music.
cassette music. According to Rediff, while Kumar “was involved in piracy, he was passionately market- and consumer-driven.The company also took advantage of loopholes in copyright law allowing for the release of cover versions of songs, which would then flood the market with. Researchers Lawrence Liang and Ravi Sundaram wrote:
T-Series was a profoundly disruptive force in the Indian music market, in large part because it was a tremendously successful pirate. The company built its catalog through a variety of quasi-legal and illegal practices … engaged in more straightforward copyright infringement in the form of pirate releases of popular hits, and it often illegally obtained film scores before the release of the film to ensure that its recordings were the first to hit the market.
Kumar discovered that there was also a market for devotional music, and began recording and selling it. Kumar noticed that many elderly Hindu followers could not read hymns and chants because of failing eyesight, so Kumar hired singers to record the chants and sold them as cheap cassettes. Later, he filmed major Hindu pilgrimages in India and sold them on VHS and video cassette tapes.
T-Series’ first original film soundtrack release was for Lallu Ram in 1984, with music scored by Ravindra Jain. The company’s breakthrough came with the soundtrack for the 1988 film Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, directed by Mansoor Khan and starring Aamir Khan and Juhi Chawla. The soundtrack, composed by Anand–Milind and written by Majrooh Sultanpuri, became the best-selling Indian soundtrack album of 1988 and one of the best-selling Indian soundtrack albums of the 1980s, with more than 8 million units sold.
The biggest hit from the album was “Papa Kehte Hain,” sung by Udit Narayan and picturized on Aamir Khan. T-Series founder Gulshan Kumar played a key role in the Hindi film music cassette boom of the late 1980s with his affordable albums.
T-Series later became a leading music label with the release of Aashiqui (1990), directed by Mahesh Bhatt. The Aashiqui soundtrack, composed by Nadeem–Shravan, sold 20 million units in India and remains the best-selling Hindi film soundtrack album of all time. A cover version of “Dheere Dheere” from Aashiqui was later sung by Yo Yo Honey Singh and released by T-Series in 2015.
T-Series was largely responsible for sparking a boom in the Indian music industry in the early 1990s. Many of the best-selling Hindi music albums of that decade, particularly those composed by Nadeem–Shravan, were released under the T-Series label. Besides music production, the company also began venturing into film production. The annual earnings of T-Series grew from ₹20 crore ($16 million) in 1985 to ₹200 crore ($88 million) in 1991, and by 1997 had reached ₹500 crore ($140 million).
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YouTube presence
T-Series joined YouTube on 13 March 2006, but only started uploading videos in late 2010. The T-Series YouTube channel is run by a team of 13 people at the T-Series headquarters. Under this channel, T-Series primarily shows music videos and film trailers.
By July 2013, T-Series had crossed 1 billion views, becoming the second Indian YouTube channel to reach this milestone. In January 2017, T-Series surpassed PewDiePie to become the world’s most-viewed YouTube channel, and as of July 2025, it has over 306 billion views. On 10 September 2018, the channel received a Custom Ruby Play Button for reaching 50 million subscribers.
T-Series was also the second channel ever to hit 70 million subscribers. On 29 May 2019, it became the first channel to reach 100 million subscribers, and in December 2021, the first to reach 200 million subscribers. Over two periods, T-Series was the most-subscribed YouTube channel: a five-day period in March 2019 and a 1,876-day period between April 2019 and June 2024.
As of September 2025, T-Series has over 304 million subscribers, making it the second most-subscribed YouTube channel, behind MrBeast. On average, the channel gains 76,000 subscribers daily.
Legal issues
In November 2007, T-Series filed a lawsuit against YouTube for infringing on the copyright of its music by allowing users to upload videos of its music onto YouTube, which could be accessed for free, and obtained an interim order against YouTube from the Delhi High Court, which restrained YouTube from infringing on its copyrights. T-Series and YouTube settled out of court in January 2011.
In April 2019, after PewDiePie released two diss tracks against T-Series, “Congratulations” and “Bitch Lasagna,” T-Series filed a complaint with the Delhi High Court to have the songs removed from YouTube, arguing that they were defamatory, disparaging, insulting, and offensive. Despite Kjellberg stating that the diss tracks were done in good fun, the court issued a temporary injunction in favor of T-Series on 8 April 2019, blocking access to the tracks on YouTube in India. In August 2019, T-Series and PewDiePie settled their legal disputes outside of court.
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