YouTube’s infamous ‘lofi hip hop radio – beats to relax/study to‘ stream has ended, running for a whopping 20,843 hours before being pulled offline. Viewers have been left puzzled as the livestream was taken down without warning, replaced with a message reading: ‘This live stream recording is not available.’
The Lofi Girl channel has become the flagbearer for a particular subculture within the YouTube community, with artists producing lofi hip-hop producing compilations and livestreamed radio sessions of laid-back music intended to be played in the background while users are studying, relaxing, or even sleeping. Lofi Girl has spawned a wave of imitators over the years, and it’s also proven to be extremely popular within the gaming space — lofi artists often post copyright-free music that Twitch streamers and YouTubers can use in the background of their videos. But with the lofi hip hop radio stream having been taken down, does this mean the Lofi Girl channel is gone for good?
What happened to the lofi hip hop girl stream and why did it end?
The Lofi Girl channel’s owner has revealed that the livestream being pulled down was as a result of false copyright strikes being submitted to YouTube, posting an image of the email they had received with the strike:
The lofi radios have been taken down because of false copyright strikes, hopefully @YouTubeCreators @YouTube will sort this quickly… pic.twitter.com/X01hL6jT2N
— Lofi Girl (@lofigirl) July 10, 2022
It wasn’t long before YouTube publicly responded, tweeting that the takedown requests were “abusive” and that the claimant’s account had been terminated in the process. The video-sharing site also noted how a channel’s videos can take 24-48 before going back to normal:
confirmed the takedown requests were abusive & terminated the claimants account 😔 we've resolved the strikes + reinstated your vids – it can sometimes take 24-48 hours for everything to be back to normal! so sorry this happened & thx for your patience as we sorted it out ❤️🩹
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) July 11, 2022
This is not the first time that the Lofi Girl channel has been hit with a false copyright strike. Back in 2020, the channel — previously known as ChilledCow — was taken offline as a result of a copyright claim. YouTube realized its error and unbanned the account. The same thing also happened in 2017, just a few months after the stream first went live.
In other news, a closed playtest for the highly anticipated Skate 4 was cracked and leaked. It was also revealed that Skull and Bones had been canceled for PS4 and Xbox One.
