Lofi Automated Recommendation Systems to Work/Study to
Algorithmic recommendation systems have, deservingly, been the subject of scrutiny amongst artists and commentators in the music industry. The New Yorker staff writer Kyle Chayka’s new book Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Cultureargues that these systems heavily shape the products we buy, and the culture we consume.
For Chayka, machine-guided curation stifles creativity and encourages homogenization. To successfully find new listeners, artist are pressured to create “scalable content”, which he describes as unchallenging, pandering, but often fails to find meaningful engagement in the long term, lest they be buried by these recommendation systems. Music commentators have long warned of the effects these systems have the production of new music, and the controversy behind the payment structures of music streaming. In 2024, Spotify announced it will no longer provide even its meagre payments to artists with under 1000 plays. Pop and hip-hop music is getting shorter and shorter to optimize streams and potential engagement on social media platforms, and some artists have opted for longer track listings to compete for more streams since 2018.
We might say that Chayka’s critiques echo longstanding issues identified within the culture industry, and early media scholars like Theodor Adorno already offer a robust criticism and explanation of how these issues negatively affected culture and the arts in the 20th century. But the egregious compensation models for musicians today has prompted a deeper discomfort with how much these algorithms shape my daily music listening. Being beholden to recommendation algorithms just feel bad. If I do care about this art form as much as I know I do, it feels as though I must disengage with this mode of consuming music. I still remember the love and curiosity of finding new music by taking out CDs from my local library, often letting the recommendations of friends, artists, or just an enticing work of cover art guide the journey.
I know that the way I consume music has changed since then. It would not be difficult, in theory, to commit to return to utilizing physical media, listen to college radio, keep a closer eye on my local music scene, but sadly, those forms of active listening, while still valuable to me, are not the primary way music lives in my life anymore.
What might be absent from this broader conversation about the cultural effects of algorithmically curated content, is that it can often instantly satisfy the kinds of impulses and desires that are readily accommodated by the instant and constant access to artistic products. If popular music is getting more homogenous, it has also been able to feel niches that take advantage of these conditions that enable music streaming to enter not only spaces for leisure and entertainment but create multimedia experiences that cater to knowledge workers.
For me, music has literally fallen into the background, to the unobtrusive sounds I need to mitigate distraction in the daily work of my PhD research. While knowledge-workers have long had a been enabled by various forms of media to enable comfortable and personalized conditions to produce their work, a part of me believes that the portion of those who have made music streaming an essential part of this process may look back on the last five years of their work, their final exam study sessions, the completion of their essays, and remember this animated companion that broadcasted music into the late working hours.
This is Lo Fi Girl. Originally created by an anonymous French music producer known only as “Dimitri Somoguy” in February 2017, “lo fi hip hop radio – beats to relax/study to” is a 24/7 music live stream, featuring a short, looping animation of a girl studying at her desk while soft, playing downtempo hip hop instrumentals. The Lo Fi Girl has over 14 million subscribers and nearly 2 billion total channel views. The unobtrusive, steady pace of Lo Fi Girl’s playlist offered a comforting, undistracting space that I unintentionally conditioned myself to have to work to. It also helps that within these livestreams, a live chat of viewers from around the world chime in their greetings and words of encouragement, sharing in a digital and global co-working environment.
Kevin Weatherwax, a PhD student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has begun studying why the lofi video streams have been an effective aid for those struggling to concentrate on certain tasks. Specifically, how we might understand the parasocial relationship viewers had with the various animated characters associated with lofi channels, and how live streaming nonhuman agents might influence human behaviour in real-time. Weatherwax is particularly interested in the ways these channels steady beats and low frequencies have aided those working with ADHD such as himself.
While this first channel has experienced some decline in popularity, it has inspired countless livestreams and playlist videos, many of which target various aesthetic, political, and even religious identities . These variations, in part due to the relative ease of production and relative popularity, have created both a demand, and over-saturation of lofi music. On the various copycat channels, many artists receive little to no recognition or monetary support for their beats. Others have alleged that many channels are created as “bot farms” for their creators to gain passive income from views on cookie cutter videos, many of which recycling the same playlists with only minor changes to their orders.
The music of these lo fi channels, by design, is not meant to draw our attention, but the video streams and hours of playlists are evidently effective at garnering passive streams in contexts where other genres of music may not be suitable. This is not to take-away from the creative work of lofi producers, the curators of these channels playlists, or the animators of their various characters. I believe that they provide a niche that genuinely aids people in a variety of work and personal contexts. But there should be something unsettling about countless streams that have appropriated and streamlined the often deeply historical and reflective practice of soul and jazz music sampling from hip-hop culture, another art form now feeding AI-generated muzak channels on both Youtube and Spotify.
Thinking about this issues has prompted a personal break from lofi radio. I am trying to reincorporate music listening, even in my working routine, that has more of an overt element of human curation. While YouTube continues to be the source of this discovery, specifically following the work of DJs who have provided sets of music for both work and play, has rekindled an interest in expanding my own tastes while still meeting the daily demands of research.
I can’t offer solutions to the current issues facing artists and their listeners in this landscape. All I have are my recommendations, and today all I can share is my current working soundtrack by Jazz Cát Lượng (apologies to Adorno). I hope that we can find a time and place in this world to listen together like this.