T-Series’s Legacy: How A Pirated Music Selling Venture Became India's largest Music Record Label
T-Series Journey: A giant in the Indian media industry, T-Series boasts of becoming the biggest music label in India. With their business expanded in Bollywood, regional cinema, pop music, devotional content, and television and internet media, the journey of Gulshan Kumar’s brainchild was never this smoothly planned and executed.
Beginning of T-Series
The founder of T-Series, Gulshan Kumar started as a fruit juice seller in Delhi’s Daryaganj. T-Series was founded initially as a platform to sell pirated Hindi songs given the limited scale of the Indian cassettes market, and prevalent piracy. The market and consumer-driven acumen of the founder had the best of him, resulting in the birth of a music production label which as of today is India’s Largest Music Record Label.
Founded on 11 July 1983, the music label’s breakthrough came in 1988 with the megahit ‘Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak’ becoming one of the best-selling Indian music albums of the 1980s.
Soon in 1990, the songs of Aashiqui, under T-Series were on the minds of everyone. Selling over 20 million copies of Aashiqui, T-Series produced music became the best-selling Indian soundtrack album of all time.
Biggest Setback
Gulshan Kumar has been the face behind the fame of T-Series. On 12 August 1997, the life of T-Series was murdered by the D-syndicate of the Mumbai Mafia. With Gulshan Kumar’s death, T-Series also lost their prodigious singer Nadeem-Shravan on grounds of speculations of Nadeem’s involvement in Kumar’s murder.
Founder’s Legacy
With the demise of Gulshan Kumar, his brothers Bhushan Kumar and Krishna Kumar took the reins of T-Series. From music production, the label has moved into movie production, devotional music videos, and a booming YouTube presence under Gulshan Kumar. But its biggest film hits came later in 2017 with Irfaan Khan and Saba Qamar’s ‘Hindi Medium grossing ₹322.4 crores globally and Prabhas’s ‘Saaho’
YouTube Dominance
The T-Series YouTube channel was launched in 2006 but started posting videos only in 2010 and became the most viewed and second-most subscribed channel worldwide with over 267 million subscribers as of June 2024. With a network of 30 network channels and a team of 13 workers, T-Series' success is credited to its loyal users from India and abroad. 40% of the YouTube traffic is due to the international viewers' contribution.
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After the advent of rapid-speed internet, the digital presence of the T-series has amplified manifold. Contributing majorly to their viewership is Punjabi Singer Guru Randhawa and song ‘Dilbar’ earning the titles of T-Series popular artist and music respectively.
T-Series Revenue
The current net worth of T-Series is $500 Million USD with YouTube generating $ 38 Million USD income and an asset value $110 Million USD as per reports.
