Today’s top tech news: Apple’s iPod, T-Series win over PewDiePie and YouTube’s new plans for students

The race between the independent YouTube channel, PewDiePie and Indian media giant, T-Series, has finally come to an end with the Bhushan Kumar enterprise coming out on top. In a long race that involving fans hacking printers to get people to subscribe, T-Series is the first to breach the 100 million subscriber mark.

Why you should care:

T-Series winning out against PewDiePie shows a larger trend of big companies are learning how to win on social media, reducing the visibility of independent artists. Even today, if you go to YouTube top trending videos, more than half are from conglomerates with videos curated especially for YouTube.

Following in Apple’s and Spotify’s footsteps, YouTube Premium has launched discounted premium plans for students on its platform. A music subscription comes down ₹59 a month and its ₹79 for the complete package with videos.

Why you should care:

Every phone has at least one music streaming app installed. More often than not, it’s YouTube since it comes coupled with the Android system. The only thing is, you have to keep YouTube open while you’re listening to songs or watching videos. A premium membership allows you to run YouTube in the background so that you can multitask — something other music streaming apps like Spotify, Gaana and JioSaavn, offer for free.

Samsung’s trying to crack the budget segment in India where a lot of its market share has been taken over by Chinese smartphone companies, primarily Xiaomi. The M40, the fourth installment of the Samsung Galaxy M-series, is coming to India on June 11 with the price expected to be around ₹20,000.

Why you should care:

There’s not a lot that’s officially known about the phone aside from the fact that it will have an Infinity O display which gives user a better screen experience. Rumour has it that it might also hold a 5,000mAh battery, which has the potential to last a whole day if optimised correctly.