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. 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.

Lofi hip hop radio images