An anonymous music streaming YouTube channel has built a loyal community of over 11 million fans, but complex copyright rules could put its future in jeopardy

• Lofi Girl is a music-streaming YouTube channel with a community of 11 million subscribers.
• Earlier this month, its stream abruptly disappeared due to a false copyright strike, YouTube said.

At any given moment, tens of thousands of people can be streaming a live YouTube feed of an animated cartoon woman sitting at a desk, methodically taking notes, occasionally looking out of her window at the cityscape outside, surrounded by books, plants, and a ginger cat. She's known as Lofi Girl, and her channel has 11 million subscribers.

But it's not the twee animation they come for — it's the music broadcast on the channel 24 hours a day in a livestream titled "lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to."

In the past five years, Lofi Girl has gone from a passion project by one 20-year-old college student to a massive YouTube channel and music business run by a team of 14. Its playlists, featuring a mix of more than 2,500 tracks from the 300 artists the channel has signed to its in-house record label, have amassed a loyal following.

But earlier this month, Lofi Girl's livestreams abruptly disappeared after the channel received a copyright strike from YouTube and was taken down without warning.

It's not the first time Lofi Girl has faced what appear to be bad-faith attempts to remove it, and while the community has always rallied behind it, the people behind the channel are concerned YouTube's not doing enough to stop it from happening again.

Lofi Girl's community is key to its success

Lofi Girl's name references the lo-fi music genre, which incorporates subtle background noise amid a mixture of house, jazz, and hip-hop to give it a made-at-home sound. The channel dates back to March 2015, when a French 20-year-old digital marketing student, known to Insider only as "Dimitri," found a passion for creating music playlists that spanned multiple genres. Inspired by popular YouTube music creators such as MrSuicideSheep and UKF, Dimitri set up a YouTube channel called ChilledCow featuring instrumental hip hop compilations. By the end of its first year, he had racked up 10,000 subscribers.

Dimitri launched the Lofi Girl livestream in February 2017 after seeing comments from listeners who said they used his compilations to study or work, and the channel quickly grew. Its listener base jumped from 100,000 to 1 million subscribers in its first six months.

Lofi Girl is set apart from other similar channels and streams because of its dedicated and close-knit community and its emphasis on up-and-coming creators. The team runs a server on the Discord messaging platform where artists submit tracks. A group of five curators, including Dimitri, decide which to release on the record label. The livestream comes together thanks to an automated queue of Lofi Girl's label backlog.

According to Dimitri, the channel has a global audience, with large listener bases in Brazil, Vietnam, and Russia, alongside the United States, with many of its listeners being students. The channel has even received mentions in academic theses and novel acknowledgments.

"We receive countless heartwarming comments from students about how the music has helped them complete assignments, pass exams, and even graduate and write books or theses," Dimitri said.

But on July 10, YouTube issued a copyright takedown notice against LoFi Girl. Without warning, a daily listen for millions of fans had disappeared.

YouTube's copyright system could endanger the future of music streaming channels

Copyright strikes are a YouTube reporting system that allows users to flag that a creator has used their intellectual property without permission. If a channel receives three copyright strikes, YouTube may terminate it.

After the channel was hit with a copyright strike, fans immediately mobilized, launching the hashtag #BringBackLofiGirl to pressure YouTube to bring back stream.

Within 24 hours of issuing the strike, YouTube determined that the copyright claims that led to Lofi Girl's suspension were "abusive." They resolved the strikes and — much to fans' relief — reinstated the channel.

The claims appear to be linked to Malaysian record label FMC Music. In a Twitter statement, FMC Music apologized for the copyright claim and blamed it on a hack.

YouTube's copyright claim system has long been criticized by creators for its potential to be exploited — as Insider previously reported — given that it's largely automated and requires little proof upfront when making a claim.

"The system incentivizes the platforms to err on the side of caution, because it tells them that once they get a takedown, they need to act quickly. And so most take things down under the mistaken belief that the counter notice system will counterbalance that," the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Katharine Trendacosta told The Fader earlier this month.

The team at Lofi Girl — along with many other YouTubers — have suggested the platform employ a manual review process on all claims and require a user prove the content violates their copyright before acting.

"We're shocked and disappointed to see that there's still not any kind of protection or manual review of these false claims," the channel tweeted following the takedown. "At the end of the day, it was entirely out of our control, and the sad part is that there was no way to appeal beforehand/prevent it from happening."

It's not the first time YouTube has erroneously dinged Lofi Girl. In February 2020, the channel was temporarily taken down after YouTube said it was "not in compliance with our Terms of Service." Three days later, YouTube reinstated the channel after determining that the site was flagged due to a "mistake on our side." Dimitri said that the team has never been able to get to the bottom of exactly why this happened.

In response to its recent troubles, Dmitri says he's working on diversifying LoFi Girl's platforms to minimize its reliance on YouTube. It boasts a successful Spotify channel and has begun dipping its toes into the physical market by selling limited-edition physical LPs of some of its releases.

Despite its struggles, the channel remains optimistic and hopes that YouTube will consider changing how sites are flagged for copyright violations. They're also well aware that their case was resolved fairly quickly, and that many smaller creators don't have the ability to quickly fix takedown issues.

"This event has shone a light on an underlying problem on the platform: it's 2022, and there are countless smaller creators out there, many of which engaged in this discussion, that continue to be hit daily by these false claims on both videos and livestreams," Lofi Girl tweeted. "Nonetheless, we remain positive and hope that YouTube will consider applying changes to their copyright reporting system to prevent such a situation from reoccurring, and protect all content creators once and for all against this threat."

For more stories like this, check out coverage from Insider's Digital Culture team here.