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In my opinion lo-fi is a different kind of music than traditional artist/album structure. It's not that I'm interested in a particular artist or album, I want to listen to a mood. Lofi provides that. I don't think that this is a unique phenomenon: look at the popularity of the Spotify artist, album, and song radio: those do the same thing, let me listen to more music that matches my current mood. I think that the difference for lofi is that by definition it's basically unoffensive background music (not a bad thing) so it gets called out a lot more as being unique from other types of music.
I haven’t listened to Lo-Fi Hip-Hop or Chillhop and some of the other ones in the article, but how is it different than Trip Hop that’s been around for decades?
I’ve noticed a much heavier use of minor keys in trip hop than lofi or chill. Tempo might match, some of the techniques might match, but that minor key changes the feel entirely. Takes you right into that dark trippy place that I love so much.
It's more jazzy and relax in general. It's usually slow. It's quite good to work.
Reminds me a great deal of soma.fm.
Lofi is great, and sits in the triphop universe. Check out some early Bonobo for instance
Though they definitely share production methods and tone and meter, TripHop is traditionally used when the artist is being experimental with form and and tone, often within the confines of a single track. There might even be a structure resembling verses and choruses.
LoFi/Chillhop is more along the lines of Ambient, with much less overall variation of tone/structures during the track or between tracks.
BPM. Massive Attack has fast undertones, etc.
> Facing paltry YouTube revenue, many lo-fi hip-hop channels have ventured beyond just curation and founded their own record labels, in order to build up a catalog that can be monetized elsewhere (e.g. on Spotify and Apple Music) in a more lucrative manner. Most of these labels sign non-exclusive deals with individual singles, rather than albums — meaning that artists can choose to release said singles with other labels as well, which can be useful for getting featured on several lo-fi compilations and mixes at once.
Pardon my ignorance, but what is the incentive driving artists to work with these record labels rather than self-publishing? Is it not possible to "self-publish" to Spotify and Apple Music without a record label? Is it strictly to increase exposure in the way mentioned in this paragraph, i.e. to have their music included in various mixes/albums from different labels?
Finally, what is the barrier to starting a record label that anyone would want anything to do with? I would (in my ignorance) think that an artist would have more leverage here, since they already belong to the community
>Is it not possible to "self-publish" to Spotify and Apple Music without a record label?
Of course it's possible. Good luck getting any streams, though.
We're talking about "milennial muzak" here. It's consumed by playlist first, as background noise. For the most part certain artists don't merit their own solo fanbases.
Clout. Discovery. Making great shit with like minded people without caring about the equity.
Tech community here could take a lesson.
The community that birthed the open source software movement and organizations like the Free Software Foundation?
There’s nothing noble about giving your money away for free to middle men.
While rent-collecting is a major problem in the music industry, this is a rather reductive statement.
Especially when it comes to more niche genres, such as lofi, a label can be a major help to increase name recognition for smaller artists just starting out, especially when said label allows such non-exclusive publishing deals and still offers the artists fair compensation. In this regard, they often serve as, essentially, incubators.
This is also a common way for much larger, more well-recognized artists within a niche to give back to the community, by providing their own name recognition to (or even starting) a relatively small label that launches other artists in similar genres, in spite of the fact that said label is less likely to give that artist in particular more value-add than another, larger one.
Lofi is huge because it’s not in the RIAA. So you can actually do stuff with it (like stream) and not get sued.
> all run by white European men in their twenties, I should say
what kind of perspective adds this? there's no such thing as "white European" in Europe. This is an Americanism
Please don't take HN threads straight into flamewar right off the bat.
Cherry-picking the detail you find most provocative and rushing to the comments to copy and complain about it is a recipe for poor-quality discussion. We're trying for better than that on HN. Especially in this case, where the provocation could not be more off topic. You should leave such things where you find them, not drag them in here and set them on fire. I'm sure that wasn't your intent—and really the upvoters do the greater part of the damage—but it is the effect nevertheless.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Yes. Sorry. Should I delete?
Oh I wouldn't worry about that. Examples are good for learning and the main goal is just to steer in the right direction going forward.
I'm confused by your comment. Isn't the article stating that the musicians that created the genre (madlib, jaylib) are black American men, which is in direct contrast to the white Europeans running these channels? There are non white Europeans in Europe of course, so it seems interesting to me to hear that they are non black and non American.
What are you adding to that fact that makes you upset?
Edit: not sure why autocorrect turned jaylib into kaylin..
Nujabes kinda popularized the genre as well. It would be weird and unnecessarily racially charged if the author referred to him as a “yellow Japanese man.”
You would probably just say a native Japanese man to imply both Japanese descent and nationality.
I mean, yes, but only because "yellow" has pejorative connotations that "white" and "black" don't have.
I don't see how saying "white European" is controversial. There are Black Europeans, Asian Europeans, etc., and the author is pointing out that these channels are not run by someone from those groups.
Now to be fair, if I find any part problematic it's the "European" bit; I assumed they meant "white Europeans from western Europe," which is what that phrase connotes to me, but the vagaries of referring to an entire continent are usually best avoided, I think.
> Isn't the article stating that the musicians that created the genre (madlib, kaylin) are black American men
No, the article isn't saying that, that's what makes the sentence cited by parent seem so gratuitous to a random reader like me.
(There is a section that mentions the names of some musicians who contributed to the genre, but without specifying their nationality or racial background).
PS It seems that the name Kaylin is not in the article.
white and black is an artifact of the American caste system. It has meaning to you because you are an American, it is the system you live in.
In Europe, it does not have meaning. blackness and whiteness is not a thing in the way it is in America.
Europeans only become white or black when they move to America or Americans address them.
Hope this helps
>In Europe, it does not have meaning. blackness and whiteness is not a thing in the way it is in America.
You must be from Western Europe. You've never been to Eastern Europe have you...
Boy you should really look into racism and ethnic violence in Europe, because I think you'd be shocked to learn that "black" and "white" DO actually mean things to Europeans. To be fair, Europe is a diverse place and I don't intend to paint with a broad brush; things are worse some places than others. But man, every time someone pops in and says "those are American problems" it makes me cringe.
Hope this helps.
American race baiting
JomaTech has one - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmVKaAV_7-A
Didn't he get caught stealing someone else's coding interview prep product and selling it on YouTube? [0]
> This is an Americanism
That "an" is an important an.
> all run by white European men in their twenties, I should say
Why should they say?
Please don't take HN threads straight into flamewar right off the bat.
Cherry-picking the detail you find most provocative and rushing to the comments to copy and complain about it is a recipe for poor-quality discussion. We're trying for better than that on HN. Especially in this case, where the provocation could not be more off topic. You should leave such things where you find them, not drag them in here and set them on fire. I'm sure that wasn't your intent—and really the upvoters do the greater part of the damage—but it is the effect nevertheless.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Thanks dang, that's a good point.
Even though this is obviously a touchy subject, I don't think this is going "straight into flamewar".
I also thought that comment felt very out of place in the article.
Because the author, Cherie Hu, is softly bigoted against white men.
Per her Twitter, she views concentrations of white men in the music industry as "alarming" and "egregious." She encourages artists to boycott lineups where white men happen to comprise the majority of the artists. Her twitter replies, likes, and selective capitalization of white/Black indicate a strong ideological alignment.
https://twitter.com/cheriehu42/status/1267836435756978179
Softly bigoted? She is blatantly racist and sexist against white men. If she made those same tweets but “white male” was replaced with “black female” it would be enough to get fired from most jobs.
That approach to white/Black capitalization is pretty standard, it's the same approach the Associated Press uses: https://apnews.com/article/9105661462
That successfully irritated me enough to stop reading.
Why is race and gender so cheaply brought into everything, regardless if it has any relevancy?
Because US people are incredibly racially polarized and almost any topic is prime for it to be used as a leverage point to imbue their racial polarization on
> regardless if it has any relevancy to me?
hip hop has a racial bias. I think that makes this somewhat relevant to note.
I think in the last decade, cultural norms in progressive circles have conditioned people to notice and point out when a community lacks racial / gender diversity. For instance, people will pay lip service to the cryptocurrency, AI, cybersecurity, FOSS communities (just to name a few) as being very "white and male" .
Just explaining why, I'm not making a normative claim here.
The author -- an asian female, I shouldn't say -- may herself believe the detail relevant because she believes the 70/30 deals struck by these white male micro-label owners are "exploitative."
But is any of it actually racially charged? It’s so strange to use race like this – it cheapens the egregious instances where racism is truly at play.
I also found this to be sort of an out-of-place comment in the article.