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?
> 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
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
> all run by white European men in their twenties, I should say
Why should they say?
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.