You likely know Lofi Girl. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, she’s the YouTuber who can often be seen sitting at her desk with her cat and headphones on, streaming relaxing beats for people to listen to, the most popular being “lofi hip hop radio – beats to relax/study to” and “beats to sleep/chill to.” Well, it was a sad day for many devout listeners when YouTube took those streams down because of false copyright strikes.
Lofi Girl has a total of 10.7 million subscribers but the two live streams, which have been streaming since February 2020, garnered a total of 757 million views, and on July 10 those videos were taken down due to a copyright claim by ‘FMC Music Sdn Bhd Malaysia.’ But turns out this claim is false. Lofi Girl told TechCrunch that the channel’s music is released through Lofi Records, its record label. Which means they have the necessary right to share it. This is not the first time YouTube has given unwarranted strikes to the channel. In 2020 YouTube removed the channel, as a mistake, for violating the Terms and Services.
The latest strike brought disappointment and then outrage by fans of the channels. One YouTube comment reads “Rest in peace to one of the most important streams in YouTube history,” another “This stream has literally been my comfort blanket and the one I put on when i’m winding down and reflecting on my day. So sad it’s been taken down. RIP.” Fans also took to spreading the word online by tweeting at YouTube with #BringBackLofiGirl.
The whole situation caught YouTube’s attention as they admitted their mistake again. In a tweet YouTube “confirmed the takedown requests were abusive & terminated the claimants account we’ve resolved the strikes + reinstated your vids.”
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
The videos should be reinstated within 48 hours, but it is unsure and unlikely that the stream will pick up where it left off. When YouTube last took down Lofi Girl the stream ended (and created a long video), so the previous existing two year long streams will probably face similar treatment.
But this shouldn’t have happened in the first place according to Lofi Girl. In a series of tweets the account wrote that they were “shocked and disappointed to see that there’s still not any kind of protection or manual review of these false claims,” and “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.”
As of Tuesday morning, the two live streams have not been reinstated. But a new “lofi hip hop radio – beats to relax/study to” has been scheduled to start back up this afternoon.