

In March, a number of YouTube streamers playing Destiny noticed that they’d been slapped with copyright strikes. Sometimes, these fraudulent DMCA takedowns can go to the extreme. “Unfortunately, we’re not entirely sure why FMC sent the complaint,” Lofi Girl told TechCrunch via Twitter message. This behavior is incredibly common, but platforms have struggled to determine when these reports are legitimate and when they’re unsubstantiated. Today, in YouTube’s reply to Lofi Girl, the company said that the takedown requests were “abusive,” meaning that they were leveraged as an attack against the channel, rather than out of actual concern for copyright violations. “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 wrote in a tweet. In that case, YouTube also owned up to its mistakes and reinstated the account, but the same issues have apparently returned. In 2020, the channel faced a similar problem when an accidental suspension ended its 13,000-hour stream. If past precedent holds true, Lofi Girl’s next stream will have to start again from the beginning, rather than as a continuation of the existing 2-year-long stream. TechCrunch reached out to YouTube for comment, and a spokesperson linked us to the company’s existing response to Lofi Girl on Twitter. The platform responded to Lofi Girl on Twitter Monday, saying that the missing livestream videos should be reinstated in 24 to 48 hours. Because Lofi Girl has the proper rights to the music, YouTube determined that the account is not in violation of copyright laws. Lofi Girl told TechCrunch that all of the channel’s music is released through its record label, Lofi Records, so they have the necessary rights to share it. Some even went as far as to spam and troll FMC Music, the Malaysian label that allegedly issued the false copyright complaint, while others created fan art. Yesterday, Lofi Girl addressed the sudden takedown in a tweet, stating that “the lofi radios have been taken down because of false copyright strikes.” In response, fans of Lofi Girl circulated the tag #BringBackLofiGirl to get YouTube’s attention. The animation accompanying the 24/7 livestream - a Studio Ghibli–inspired image of a girl wearing headphones and studying as her cat stares out the window at a cityscape - has been honored in cosplay, replicated by Will Smith and re-created on Cartoon Network’s YouTube channel with a character from “Steven Universe.” Even beyond YouTube, Lofi Girl lives in spin-off communities, including the 30,000-member r/LofiGirl subreddit and a Lofi Girl Discord with 700,000 members. On the YouTube stream, which currently serves a “this live stream recording is not available” message, one of the top comments reads: “Hopefully it isn’t over yet, this stream is legitimately a hugely important part of YouTube culture.”

YouTube is cluttered with hours-long streams of calming music, but the live nature of the “lofi hip hop radio” streams sets it apart. So when the stream suddenly stopped, fans were worried. Listeners sometimes used the stream’s live chat like an anonymized, distant study group, reminding each other to take breaks and drink water. With over 668 million views, the stream was one of YouTube’s most popular places for people to go when they wanted to listen to calming, yet engaging music while studying or working.
You tube musica relax Offline#
That is, until YouTube falsely hit the Lofi Girl channel with a DMCA takedown, bringing the beloved streams offline for the first time in over 2 years.

There are three constants in life: death, taxes and the “ lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to” YouTube stream.
