Episodes we love: Lofi Girl

This November, we're playing some of our favorite episodes from the past alongside new stuff, so that newer listeners can experience our back catalogue. And LoFi Girl is one that holds up, big time! If you've ever searched for "chill beats for studying" or some other form of lean back, endless playlists without vocals and with a consistent vibe, you've probably come across "Lofi Girl." A livestreamed Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfKfPfyJRdk featuring a looped animation of a girl in a cosy apartment on her desk at night, the channel has brought in millions upon millions of views and subscribers. It's also the big bang for an expanding universe, from additional channels and streams featuring slightly different animated characters and music genres, to copycats, to memes and lore - including stories about a mysterious French music producer, Dimitri.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questram School of Business. A recent episode explores how AI is reshaping our schools. Stick around until the end of this podcast to preview the episode.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  Support for Endless Thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you, so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 1:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  Amory.

• 1:03Amory Sivertson?

  Ben.

• 1:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  The greatest hits that keep on coming.

• 1:07Amory Sivertson?

  Hell, yeah. We're revisiting some favorites from the archives to introduce the newcomers to the show to how we roll.

• 1:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, and also how we chill, which is a little clue about this next encore episode. So grab your headphones, your notebook, your cozy clothes, your pencil.

• 1:29Amory Sivertson?

  Yep, snuggle up next to that favorite window of yours with your cat and enjoy.

• 1:44Speaker 05

  WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

• 1:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  Let producer Nora Sax and I

• 1:55Speaker 06

  introduce you to Kevin.

• 1:57Speaker 07

  My name is Kevin Weatherwax, he/him pronouns. I'm a PhD student at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

• 2:05Speaker 06

  When you hear Kevin's credentials, you might be surprised to immediately after that hear how hard studying and schoolwork has been for pretty much his whole life.

• 2:15Speaker 07

  So I had a really atypical path through school. I was a high school dropout. I kicked out over and over again. As a kid, I got all these diagnoses really young about what was wrong with me. And that just pursued me through my life. And it was always this thing, well, what's wrong with you? How can you be more like other people and stop being like you?

• 2:42Ben Brock Johnson?

  Kevin would eventually be diagnosed with ADHD, which was listed as the source of his academic challenges.

• 2:49Speaker 06

  Kevin was a curious person and a hard worker, though. Eventually, in his mid to late 20s, he dove back into school. He says there was a lot of relearning he had to do.

• 2:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  Part of which was just learning how he could do work in the right way.

• 3:04Speaker 07

  Really early on, what I found is in my work and study practices, that it was really beneficial for me to carve out feelings of anxiety and frustration or worrying about the future and stay focused in my space that I was in if I had some ambient music, low-key stuff going on.

• 3:39Speaker 06

  Kevin was an early adopter of early internet-based ambient music listening channels, some of which were on YouTube. They used visuals often connected with anime, which helped, too.

• 3:50Speaker 07

  They made me feel calm and safe.

• 3:56Speaker 07

  I would kind of curate my workspace to even sort of not just use the music, but I would include the visuals when I could.

• 4:03Ben Brock Johnson?

  As in, have a screen up with the actual visual as well as listening to the music while he was studying?

• 4:10Speaker 06

  Then, somewhere towards the end of his undergrad degree or beginning of his doctoral program.

• 4:16Speaker 07

  I always joke like a lot, I was working in the lab late one night, which was accurate. And I was...

• 4:23Ben Brock Johnson?

  He was working in the lab late one night.

• 4:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  And he discovered the be all, end all of Study Buddies, a YouTube channel with a girl sitting at a window that looks out onto a European cityscape, doing her own work and listening to lo-fi hip hop.

• 4:40Speaker 06

  Kevin was far from alone. He was part of an exploding audience for a mysterious and popular YouTube channel, which would have several names, but would be most commonly referred to as Lo-Fi Girl.

• 4:58Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'm Ben Brock Johnson.

• 5:00Speaker 06

  I'm Nora Ruth Valerie Sacks.

• 5:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  And you're listening to Endless Thread from WBUR, Boston's NPR station. Today, the story of a mysterious pal whose simple presence has turned into a phenomenon, inspired copycats, and probably has helped a ton of people get a ton of schoolwork done.

• 5:19Speaker 06

  This is the Lo-Fi Girl multiverse.

• 5:30Speaker 06

  Emily Heap, a 29-year-old marketing specialist and makeup artist from Cleveland, is a lot like Kevin.

• 5:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  So, how did Lo-Fi Girl come into your life?

• 5:41Speaker 08

  Oh, gosh. I couldn't even pinpoint a year.

• 5:44Speaker 06

  There is one stream of music that Emily listens to on repeat, one that feels almost like her own personal soundtrack, the same one Kevin listens to.

• 5:56Speaker 08

  So it got me through a lot of late nights of homework, long days at work, and I even listen to it now every night to go to sleep.

• 6:03Ben Brock Johnson?

  The YouTube channel is officially called, quote, "Lo-fi hip-hop radio beats to study slash relax to." It was apparently started by this young and somewhat mysterious French producer, known only as Dimitri. It now plays an infinite 24/7 curated livestream of what is known as lo-fi hip-hop. It's a type of mostly instrumental hip-hop that features downtempo beats with some low-fidelity elements thrown in that sort of creates a perfectly imperfect, kind of nostalgic, atmospheric, uber-chill vibe.

• 6:36Speaker 08

  It really helps you focus and calm and kind of get in your peaceful place.

• 6:41Speaker 06

  This stream has become massively popular. It has 13 million subscribers, a loyal following, and it's been a huge force in underground music. And yet somehow, it still feels like a secret, but one everybody knows about.

• 6:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  Definitely an open secret. Any time of the day or night you start streaming this channel, there are tens of thousands of people streaming too. The animation transitions from day into night. The cityscape outside the window gets dark and lights come on in other windows. Even if you've never heard of this channel, you'd probably recognize the animation that goes with it. The anime-style girl with brown hair, big eyes, wearing headphones. She is always writing in her journal or studying at her desk in her cozy little room, petting her orange cat while it stares out the window. There's just enough animation for it to not be static. It's a loop, but somehow, it doesn't really feel like a loop. And it's been that way for years.

• 7:42Speaker 06

  But then, back in April...

• 7:44Speaker 08

  I was getting ready for work. I'd worked from home that day, and I went on as I do every single morning, and I put on my lo-fi girl, and she was gone.

• 7:59Speaker 06

  Meaning she was out of the room in the animation, which if you're one of the millions who expect Lo-Fi Girl to be in her place, turning her head, playing with her pencil, on a loop like she always is, it was a huge change. Emily was so rattled, she started recording on TikTok.

• 8:16Speaker 08

  Hi, guys. I just woke up. Everything is happening all at once. Let's go over the Lo-Fi Girl lore, because shit is happening with Lo-Fi Girl right now.

• 8:25Ben Brock Johnson?

  Before Lo-Fi Girl, and her cat disappeared from the animation, a blue light in a far-off window had started blinking.

• 8:32Speaker 08

  And they turn their heads and they look at it, because that is not normal. Normally, she's looking at the computer.

• 8:37Speaker 06

  The shot zooms closer and closer to that blue window until it's inside. A door appears.

• 8:45Speaker 08

  And that's when I started to realize that something a little deeper was going on.

• 8:55Ben Brock Johnson?

  So if you were on the Lo-Fi Girl stream on April 12th, instead of Study Girl doing her thing, you were zooming into this blue window, collectively staring at a door.

• 9:05Speaker 08

  There's keys jingling.

• 9:14Speaker 08

  Did it go? I was right.

• 9:20Speaker 08

  I was right. And he has a dog.

• 9:34Speaker 06

  This is Emily's TikToked reaction to the expansion of the Lo-Fi Girl universe, the debut of a whole new character and his own livestream. If Lo-Fi Girl's aesthetic is chill, study vibes, Lo-Fi Boy, or Synth Boy, is chill gamer vibes. He's sitting in front of a computer, Nintendo controller to his left, lava lamp to his right, with all kind of nerdy accoutrements sprinkled around him. And fittingly, his channel is Synthwave Radio, Beats to Chill or Game 2.

• 10:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  There is no bong, pipe, vape, chubbler.

• 10:09Ben Brock Johnson?

  Nothing like that in sight. But you know it's around there somewhere.

• 10:13Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, it's under his other controller for sure.

• 10:18Speaker 06

  So Ben, in the end, lofi girl didn't disappear. She just gained a cute little friend. And clearly, this was all still a very big deal to devotees like Emily.

• 10:30Speaker 08

  Lofi Girl, like I said, has always been kind of in the background, just a fun little character. It's been a part of my life for so long. And when something changed, it was then that I realized like, oh, my gosh, I kind of do have this weird parasocial relationship with her.

• 10:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  Kevin defines parasocial this way.

• 10:56Speaker 07

  It's this idea that you can have an emotional connection to a character or a space or an idea that is presented to you in media that is not reciprocated or can't be reciprocated by the nature of the relationship, essentially.

• 11:12Ben Brock Johnson?

  Color me is a little bit skeptical, even as a podcast host, of the idea of value in parasocial relationships. But then again, I am a fan of this channel, too.

• 11:23Speaker 06

  Kevin says people who form parasocial relationships aren't weird. They know it's one-sided and aren't under any illusion that the other party knows they exist, let alone is going to return their feelings.

• 11:35Ben Brock Johnson?

  With the lofi girl's stream humming along next to him, as he would start to lose his focus, Kevin would glance over at this short animated loop he's seen millions of times before. And this is part of how Kevin's interest in the channel transitioned from fandom to true academic study, because he realized something.

• 11:55Speaker 07

  And I noticed that when she would get back to work in the loop, where she would sort of phase out for a second and then start again, I was finding myself feeling prompted to get back to my own work. And I started thinking, well, that's really odd. Why am I taking behavioral cues from something that I know is going to occur every couple seconds and is just an animated character? How is this prompting me to do anything, to change my behavior?

• 12:23Speaker 06

  So Kevin starts taking in, wanting to better understand, quote, parasocial relationships in the live streaming of non-human agents, their ability to influence human behavior in real time, and the important facets of streaming environments that facilitate this.

• 12:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  That language is from an academic paper that Kevin co-wrote. He and his colleagues collected and analyzed data from the live chat windows, which is the main place streamers interact with each other, at least on YouTube. They also did lots of exploratory interviews with people who listen and watch assorted lo-fi music streams. And a clear theme started to emerge.

• 13:00Speaker 07

  And I saw this, a lot of this thing of people talking about, oh, I, you know, oh, the lo-fi girl, she works and studies like I do. She's this kind of partner, this, this, um, almost, you know, not a friend, but like, someone that you relate to.

• 13:15Speaker 06

  A safe companion, that you don't need to expend any energy interacting with, and yet helps you feel calm and stay focused. A key ingredient, aside from the music, is the environments the characters exist within.

• 13:29Speaker 07

  It's this idyllic space, or spaces, because there's lots of different types of them.

• 13:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  Right.

• 13:34Speaker 07

  But they do have that in common, that there's something inviting, but not over-engaging. That there's a, a degree of animation that invites somebody to feel a part of the space, almost like this kind of window into this idyllic world, but it's not so engaging as they'd be distracting, or to, to really encourage you to lose yourself in it.

• 14:04Speaker 06

  And this connection to the character and/or their space seemed to hit on a feeling of nostalgia for people, or an escape to a different time or even world. But briefly, and without the need for high engagement.

• 14:18Speaker 07

  You know, a lot of this stuff is rooted in, like, Adult Swim.

• 14:23Speaker 07

  Bumps, late nights, animation, you know, it's got anime, there's anime aesthetic to it. There's a lot of the old, original songs had loops from old Adult Swim shows in them, or even were just the little bump tracks that they'd play in Adult Swim. So I don't know if you're, you're an Adult Swim person.

• 14:40Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, you're, you're, you're, you're, uh, I'm smoking what you're rolling.

• 14:44Speaker 07

  I would fall asleep to that every night, every, every night for, for 10 years.

• 14:49Speaker 06

  For the uninitiated, Adult Swim is like Saturday morning cartoons for big kids. It started as late night alternative programming on Cartoon Network with special music from underground hip hop artists, original shows, et cetera. Again, this is something we would love to talk to lo-fi girls creator Dmitry or Dmitry's team about. Did Adult Swim inspire them? But since they keep declining our requests, what we can say is that Adult Swim is very similar to lo-fi channels because of its distinctive vibe.

• 15:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  And a lot of these channels, Nora, seem to connect to this sort of Nordic idea of coziness, or, or is it, is it Haiga? Haigi?

• 15:27Speaker 06

  I thought it was Higa, but I think it's Huga.

• 15:31Ben Brock Johnson?

  Ah.

• 15:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, but I know exactly what you're talking about. And in addition to the Hugeness and nostalgia-based listening and viewing experience, people in the chats also openly discuss stress, fear, or trauma they're dealing with from school or work, or really just being a human on the planet.

• 15:48Speaker 07

  People in the chats, they go in there and they leave just these positive comments. Hey, everybody that's doing this right now, you're doing great. Keep trying. It doesn't matter if it feels bad. Like, it's a surprisingly non-toxic environment.

• 16:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  In his preliminary study, Kevin concluded that some users did form parasocial relationships, and that this almost static animation and super chill lo-fi really does increase relaxation and focus. But Kevin has another theory too, one that's shaped his research into this.

• 16:26Speaker 07

  Oh, I think part of what's useful about this, or some of the people that are using this are neurodivergent like myself, and that something about this relationship to this character is almost like assistive technology for them. It's kind of co-opted or colloquial assistive technology. It's not designed with them in mind, but it happens to strike some specific chord that's helpful for people like me.

• 16:54Speaker 06

  More on lofi music and brains after the break.

• 17:12Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. How should employers measure real skills in the age of AI?

• 17:25Speaker 09

  Instead of observing the final artifact, instead of observing the final essay or the final program, observe the entire process of creation.

• 17:34Speaker 00

  Follow Is Business Broken? wherever you get your podcasts and stick around until the end of this podcast for a preview of a recent episode on rethinking academic and job assessment when AI can do the work.

• 17:52Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 18:21Speaker 10

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• 18:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  So as we said, Kevin Weatherwax has been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, ADHD.

• 19:00Speaker 06

  According to WebMD, it's the most commonly diagnosed mental disorder in children, one that can neither be prevented nor cured. It continues on into teenage and adulthood years and has lots of different kinds of symptoms.

• 19:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  Many of which feel very familiar to me. In fact, when Kevin asked me about how I ended up on this lo-fi journey myself, it's a great question. I suppose it's always tricky to say this kind of thing. I'm pretty sure I'm like, undiagnosed ADHD.

• 19:32Speaker 07

  Not tricky.

• 19:34Speaker 07

  Anybody, I think, should be able to say that.

• 19:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's what it feels like.

• 19:37Speaker 07

  Because it's hard to get a diagnosis.

• 19:39Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 19:40Speaker 07

  And you had to be an extreme problem, especially to be like an old, in your 30s, 40s now, and have a diagnosis. I do, from very, very young. I was a real pain in the ass problem. I'm putting, I'm gonna do air quotes, to the teachers and the people as around me as a kid, I just, I got slammed on me.

• 19:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 19:59Speaker 07

  But not, if you were just, if you were functional or able to

• 20:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 20:04Speaker 07

  engage with the space, you weren't gonna get it. And as an adult, you can't, really. And so it's like, what are people to do?

• 20:10Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, that's, yeah. So I think, I do think that is like a fundamental part of my personality, like I can hyper-focus, but I'm also like extremely consistently and constantly distractible, so.

• 20:24Speaker 07

  Me too, which is why I accidentally have two dissertation tracks that I'm having competing for which one's gonna be the final one. One is on my human robots interaction research and one is on the lo-fi stuff.

• 20:45Speaker 06

  When it comes to assistive technology for neurodivergent people, Kevin says he's observed a strong tendency for interventions that

• 20:53Speaker 07

  seek to sort of Transform someone from neurodivergent to neurotypical or neurotypical behaving.

• 21:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  Right.

• 21:00Speaker 07

  Rather than being augmentative, which is what I really like about the lofi. My relationship to lofi is part of my work and study practice. And what I see other neurodivergent people also having, which is that it's augmentative. It doesn't, it's not about making me not be neurodivergent or behave as someone who's neurotypical. It just, um, helps butress some of the areas where I struggle while building up my strengths.

• 21:25Ben Brock Johnson?

  Another speculation that is not backed up by data yet.

• 21:29Speaker 07

  I think that there's a possibility that, um, what these kind of media channels do for people that are neurodivergent is it allows them to participate in kind of, um, social coworking without expending social capital that is a higher, can be a higher cost for neurodivergent people.

• 21:48Speaker 06

  Another probably not coincidence, Emily Heap, the Cleveland Tech Talker we talked to, also volunteered that she has ADD. And we should say that this is how she described it, although these days, most people describe this disorder not as ADD, but ADHD. Either way.

• 22:05Speaker 08

  It kind of like tickles your brain the right way, if that makes sense. It's just like scratches that itch in there. And I'm like, oh, it's perfect.

• 22:12Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yep. And I can keep working.

• 22:14Speaker 08

  Yes, yes. It helps me focus so much.

• 22:17Ben Brock Johnson?

  Maybe it's a pharmaceutical company that's, um, that's behind it. Who knows?

• 22:22Speaker 08

  Maybe. They're like, there's an Adderall shortage. Give them lofi.

• 22:31Speaker 06

  So we know, anecdotally at least, that these lofi hip hop music streams help neurodivergent folks like Kevin and Emily and probably others, relax and focus. But not necessarily why or how? What's really going on up there inside our nonkins?

• 22:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  I wish I knew. I honestly wish I knew. But we did get some help. We turned to Dr. Conchetta Tomeno, AKA Connie from the Bronx.

• 22:58Speaker 11

  I am the executive director and co-founder of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function. I'm a board-certified music therapist with a master's and doctorate in music therapy and have been a music therapist for 44 years.

• 23:14Speaker 06

  Connie is a pioneer in the field of music therapy and was a close friend and colleague of the late British neurologist Oliver Sacks.

• 23:22Ben Brock Johnson?

  Your uncle, right?

• 23:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, not related at all. I wish. No Uncle Oliver in the family.

• 23:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  Nora Sacks's non-relative, Oliver Sacks, may be the only neurologist to ever have a big-budget movie made about his work, at least one that stars Robert De Niro.

• 23:41Speaker 06

  You work here?

• 23:41Ben Brock Johnson?

  No, I live here.

• 23:44Speaker 06

  You don't look like a patient.

• 23:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  I don't?

• 23:48Speaker 06

  Over the decades, Connie has witnessed music work magic as medicine.

• 23:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  Is music a net positive on brain function?

• 24:00Speaker 11

  Oh, absolutely. I think I could say that. I think the science supports that, too.

• 24:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  There was the old man who had a stroke and couldn't talk, but then, all of a sudden, started singing "Old Man River."

• 24:12Speaker 06

  And the young girl who had seizures every night before she was about to fall asleep, until Connie created and prescribed a music track.

• 24:20Speaker 11

  The rhythm would gradually get slower and slower and slower, so it would ease her brain into a more relaxed state.

• 24:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hmm, softer landing.

• 24:29Speaker 11

  Exactly, and it actually worked, so I was very happy.

• 24:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  Wow.

• 24:34Speaker 06

  The reason music is used as and in therapy is because it engages all parts of the brain in different ways.

• 24:42Speaker 11

  And so we have a way of not only organizing the brain in a very purposeful way, but stimulating and arousing the areas that may be a little out of sync.

• 24:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  Take someone with ADHD.

• 24:54Speaker 11

  The main thing is that there's...

• 24:58Speaker 11

  Hyperactivity in different areas of the brain.

• 25:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  Which makes it hard to focus.

• 25:04Speaker 11

  Because there's too much noise and too much activity going on. That distracts the type of focus that's needed to learn or to do a task.

• 25:18Speaker 06

  Okay, now, listen up, because this is the coolest thing I've heard in a really long time. Music doesn't only engage your gray matter. The rhythm of the music can actually entrain the rhythm of the brain.

• 25:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  This was like a galaxy brain explosion moment for me, Nora. Connie says entrainment is basically when one stimulus influences another.

• 25:42Speaker 11

  The pulse at which those rhythms take place is now influencing the pulse at which the neurons are firing.

• 25:50Ben Brock Johnson?

  What that makes me think of is like,

• 25:55Ben Brock Johnson?

  music can serve almost as a metronome for the way that the brain is functioning and organizing information.

• 26:05Speaker 11

  Absolutely. So, think about how a musician uses a metronome.

• 26:09Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 26:10Speaker 11

  And they use it to stay in time in their performance or to be able to perform the music with other musicians.

• 26:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  Sure.

• 26:19Speaker 11

  The external rhythm actually does the same thing. And in fact, that's why it's effective with somebody with ADHD is it's providing a steady beat and organizing brain rhythms that the person internally isn't able to organize.

• 26:41Speaker 06

  One of the reasons lo-fi hip-hop music is such an awesome metronome for folks with hyperactive brains is because it's slow.

• 26:49Speaker 11

  You know, 70 to 90 beats per minute, I believe, is the standard for lo-fi. So that low rhythm in and of itself is producing a very relaxed state.

• 27:05Ben Brock Johnson?

  Also, Connie says, it doesn't usually have a huge range of frequencies or sudden changes in pitch, which also helps our physiological state get calm. And yet, there's just enough going on in the music to filter out background noises, but also engage your brain, all at the same time.

• 27:25Speaker 06

  Scientists are still trying to figure out exactly how this all works on beta and theta waves and all that good stuff. But for now, I think we can safely say lofi music does have an influence on brain activity.

• 27:38Speaker 11

  And I think it's because of that very regular rhythmic beat that is engaging the brain in such a way that helps regulate then how the brain is functioning.

• 27:56Speaker 06

  Another very exciting discovery. There's so much more to the lofi world than just our old digital friend lofi girl and her new friend, or as a boyfriend, lofi boy. If that channel really was the Big Bang, the lofi universe has just kept on expanding and diversifying.

• 28:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  Even beyond other very popular and very similar channels with almost identical names, like college music's lofi hip hop radio mellow chill study beats.

• 28:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's real close to home.

• 28:27Speaker 07

  Any identity that you can think of, for the most part, you can go and look for that in lofi. And you'll probably find somebody who's made something for it. Muslim lofi, Christian lofi.

• 28:41Speaker 07

  Left wing lofi, right wing lofi, Indian lofi.

• 28:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  Boomer lofi.

• 28:50Speaker 06

  Where's my mom?

• 28:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  You get the idea. That's our PhD computational media nerd Kevin Weatherwax again, by the way.

• 28:58Speaker 06

  Just for funsies, we Googled Jewish lofi.

• 29:09Ben Brock Johnson?

  Queer lofi.

• 29:16Speaker 06

  And at Kevin's recommendation, because it's one of his personal, very out there favorites, Bernie Sanders lofi.

• 29:23Speaker 05

  Mr. President, um, is, I think everyone knows.

• 29:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  I am once again asking you to listen to lofi music.

• 29:36Speaker 06

  So we could have done this all day and very late into the night.

• 29:40Ben Brock Johnson?

  We could have and gotten some work done probably at the same time.

• 29:42Speaker 06

  Probably it might have been even far more productive than we ever are.

• 29:47Speaker 06

  But I think what we really figured out is that the lofi universe is basically infinitely expanding, maybe even creating alternate dimensions. I'm pretty sure the pandemic had something to do with it.

• 30:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  I agree with that. We all had more time at home for chilling and we all also really needed to chill. As he and his colleagues studied this expanding lofi girl multiverse, Kevin started to wonder something.

• 30:13Speaker 07

  Could there be a human, not a cartoon character version of this? And what I found was there is a very popular channel in South Korea called The Man Studying Next To Me.

• 30:23Ben Brock Johnson?

  Whoa.

• 30:24Speaker 07

  Studying By Me. And he is this young kid, must be in his early twenties or something, who essentially would do these long-ish livestreams of himself studying and then he would turn those into really long loops.

• 30:39Speaker 06

  I'm not exactly sure which channel he was talking about because I discovered so many of these.

• 30:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  I know, right? Like, lofi is like Japan, Korea, the UK, Norway. Watching all of these and realizing the existence of so many flavors of lofi kind of broke my brain, Nora. Like, are we living, clearly living in a computer program? Like, are we just incredibly inspired by other creations of chill vibes? Like, what is happening?

• 31:11Speaker 07

  Like, I mean, it's such a labor of love to just build something that is, you're like, oh, this other thing makes me feel really good, but I would also love to see myself in it. So I'm just gonna make that.

• 31:20Ben Brock Johnson?

  Learning from Kevin and Connie from the Bronx about the Lo-Fi Girl multiverse was really surprising for me as a low-key Lo-Fi Girl fan. Learning that these channels are good for me and my brain is great. But I also had started with a more skeptical question, one that I told you about, Nora. Is Lo-Fi Girl good for music? Or is it, in a weird way, part of this, like, general degradation of artistry? Let the algorithms take over and remove the person behind the art, et cetera?

• 31:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's a really good question. And I should say here that we tried our darndest to reach Dimitri, or really, anyone from Lo-Fi Girl. We didn't get a response, except that they wanted to stay anonymous. And we also contacted a bunch of their different artists around the globe, and they also seemed not so into talking, which I kind of get, you know? They just want to have their alias or moniker and keep making their chill vibes. But one was game.

• 32:20Speaker 12

  So yeah, this is an upcoming track that I'm working on, not quite finished.

• 32:30Speaker 06

  This is Antonio, aka Mondo Loops, generously walking me through a Lo-Fi hip-hop song, work in progress. Mondo means world in Italian, and Antonio makes a lot of guitar loops.

• 32:48Ben Brock Johnson?

  Antonio is based in northwest England, and he's a full-time producer, mostly of Lo-Fi hip-hop stuff. Also chill hop, a lot of hops, really. You're kind of hearing his music, so you get the idea. And now he's started messing around with field recordings as well, of things like leaves crunching and twigs snapping, very ASMR.

• 33:15Speaker 12

  And before that, I sort of started off releasing some guitar-based music, mostly instrumental, just pure guitar stuff. And it sort of evolved into the sort of Lo-Fi thing quite naturally. It's quite a similar sort of sound palette.

• 33:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  We wanted to talk to Antonio because, you know, again, I was just worried about this idea that maybe Lo-Fi Hip-Hop Girl was so kind of in the background that it sort of just removed the artist from, I don't know, the art in a way, you know, turning people into more sort of faceless, nameless chill music generator bots, right? But at least for this young British producer, that didn't feel like the case. Actually, he says it was the exact opposite.

• 34:08Speaker 06

  Right. Antonio told us that a few years ago, very early on into his music career, he sent some demos to the team behind the Lo-Fi Girl stream, who also now run a record label. And Lo-Fi Girl liked them and dropped some of his tracks into their playlists on Spotify and other streaming platforms. And this bumped his audience big time in the region of-

• 34:30Speaker 12

  Few hundred a week to tens of thousands a week. It was a big jump.

• 34:34Speaker 06

  Then they asked him to write a song for this compilation album they released called 1 a.m. Study Sessions. Yep, they release whole-ass compilation albums of original music, all inspired by the original stream. They put it out on vinyl and YouTube. And since then, Antonio has released several albums with the Lo-Fi Girl label and contributed to loads more compilations since. And he characterized the lo-fi scene as super international, very collaborative, and generally pretty open and sharing oriented.

• 35:05Ben Brock Johnson?

  My first impression was that infinite live streams like Lo-Fi Girl and a lot of its spinoffs wouldn't be great for producers like Mondo Loops.

• 35:13Speaker 06

  But Antonio didn't seem to feel flattened or anonymous or like he was just another lo-fi cog in the wheel or chill music generator bot at all.

• 35:23Speaker 12

  It works, it works both ways because-

• 35:28Speaker 12

  Whilst it's not necessarily artist-focused, the sort of model that it ran off quite naturally worked in the artist's favour financially when it moves on to streaming services. Not that it was the intention of the channel at all, but with sites like Spotify, you get paid, obviously per listen.

• 35:49Ben Brock Johnson?

  Sure.

• 35:51Speaker 12

  And with a lot of artists, it can be a real struggle to get the sort of fanbase and the following to get any sort of substantial earnings from Spotify and Apple and that sort of thing.

• 36:03Speaker 12

  You get paid sort of like four, three or four dollars per thousand streams.

• 36:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 36:08Speaker 12

  But when it comes to lo-fi music, you've got the financial element of people put it on in the background and they'll listen to a hundred songs, 200 songs while they're studying, which reflects in much higher streaming. And as an artist, it supported me financially to sort of make this my full-time career. Without this, I don't think I'd be sort of a full-time music producer. I owe my career really to Lo-Fi Girl supporting my music.

• 36:41Ben Brock Johnson?

  Nora, you may not be a Lo-Fi Girl superfan, but what do you come away from all of this with? Like, what does it make you think about?

• 36:51Speaker 06

  Well, I'm not a superfan, but I've become a fan where I wasn't one before. And I actually have found myself like turning to the stream sometimes and listening to more of Monde Lopes and other artists' music. And, I mean, I love thinking about how my brain is being engaged and also freed to focus. And I'm not saddled with this burden of like, oh, all the artists, you know, are just muzakified and this is bad for them. Like, actually, every time I stream them on Spotify or play it, I'm actively supporting an independent artist and his record label, which feels good.

• 37:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  With a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a penny.

• 37:32Speaker 06

  Yes, here's part of my penny for you. But then I've told a lot of friends too, and everyone just seems somehow more chilled out and focused. It's weird.

• 37:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  I mean, did you discover that a lot of your friends knew about this?

• 37:48Speaker 06

  Hmm, yeah, when I mentioned it, the name "lofi girl" didn't click. But then when I described the music and the stream and the animation, they were like, "Oh, yeah, like, I'm into that. I've been into that for a long time."

• 38:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, I think that's, you know, to me, what's really interesting is like, the way you described it as like, a secret that everybody knows about, you know? It's like, we don't really talk about lofi girl. At least, most of us don't, unless you're Kevin or Emily, right? But like, I think it's just this interesting thing that like, is actually a companion for a ton of people who are not actually talking about that companionship, right?

• 38:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  And then also, just the idea that it has this like, positive community that it's created, where people are sort of like, supporting each other. And also, just like, being together in this sort of weird internet space. I think that stuff is, is really interesting. But I agree with you that the entrainment idea of the brain getting sort of like, locked into a more productive state is really fascinating. And it's cool to get a glimpse of some things that we still really don't understand, thanks to people like Connie and Kevin, and Emily, too.

• 39:05Speaker 06

  Yeah, and to feel just like there's something good for the listeners and good for the makers in internet music is, it's a rare feeling I'm gonna cherish and keep jamming to.

• 39:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  We did it, guys. We fixed it all. It's all fixed now. Everything's positive on the internet now. No problem. Everybody go home.

• 39:28Speaker 06

  Go home and study slash vibe slash game slash chill, okay?

• 39:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  Don't forget you're a chubbler.

• 39:48Speaker 06

  Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was produced and co-hosted by me, Nora Ruth Valerie Sacks, with help from Endless Thread co-hosts Ben Brock Johnson and Dean Russell. Dmitri, if you're out there, still love to talk. Our sound designer on this episode was the super chill, Paul Vikes. The rest of our team is Sama Tajoshi, Matt Reed, Hamri Seibertson, Quincy Walters, Emily Jankowski, and Grace Tatter. Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between online communities, a lava lamp, an orange cat, and a game controller. If you have an unsolved mystery or an untold history that you want us to tell, hit us up, [email protected]. Bye now.

• 40:48Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. Follow Is Business Broken? wherever you get your podcasts, and listen on for a preview of a recent episode featuring Janet Kang, Executive Director of the Just Horizons Alliance, on who stands to benefit from AI in education.

• 41:11Speaker 13

  I am absolutely in favor of AI in learning in the right context.

• 41:15Speaker 11

  And just to explain why you're excited about it.

• 41:18Speaker 13

  Oh, my gosh, individualized support, right? Personalization, and to be able to scale quality education in places where it was historically impossible. So for certain kinds of learners with different kinds of learning styles and disabilities, for example, speakers of different languages, there are amazing ways AI can boost learning. It just has to be with the right context. And age appropriateness is something we do a lot of work in, because it is very different depending on where in that maturity cycle you are in terms of how your brain develops.

• 41:49Speaker 00

  Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken? wherever you get your podcasts, and learn more about the Marotra Institute for Business, Markets, and Society at ibms.bu.edu.

• 42:08Speaker 02

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• 42:37Speaker 14

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