Youtube and Music, not Youtube Music lol
Youtube's dominance in music streaming and the democratization of the artist.
Everyone’s favorite study partner
If you haven’t studied with her already, meet the infamous lofi study girl featured in the gif above. Every day she’s writing the same few lines and moving on the next page as countless college students listen to ChilledCow’s live-stream of lofi hip hop - beats to study/relax to.
As I’m writing this, with 16K viewers watching the live-stream. Chilled Cow - the account that owns this live stream, amongst others - has racked up 3.84 Million chillers in just over the past 4 years.
More people than ever are streaming music, and a majority of it happens for FREE on Youtube. Let’s be honest, who uses youtube?? music??? Personally, it’s what I find the easiest to study to, I don’t have to open up the Spotify App, I just need to open up a new tab. I’ve found some of my favorite chill artists through this:
Lovewave - Youtube Mixtape (My go-to study mix)
It’s Everyday Bro
I throw around this term a lot, “the democratization of…” and I firmly believe it. In this era, anyone and anything can capture an audience. Youtube’s landscape has changed over the years, and although I doubt we will have another Justin Bieber or Greyson Chance break the entire internet, more and more artists are coming out of the platform. On Youtube, this looks like two things:
Youtuber Music lol
Firstly more typical Youtube Creators transitioning into music to increase their reach (and make BANK). We saw this big eruption in 2016 with Jake Paul and Team 10’s Everyday Bro (amassing over 250M views) a video that catapulted a whole era of trash music. Drew Gooden summarizes it way better than me here.
Recently SIGNED, Cody Ko and Noel Miller starting Tiny Meat Gang, which mostly started as a joke riding this 2016 trend, but now has a podcast, separate youtube channel, and around 2M monthly spotify listens. They even collabed with Blackbear lol
Cover Artists
The other way I’ve seen this evolve is through creators covering their favorite music. Covers are a trustworthy format of growing a brand since viewers already know what they are getting into, with the novelty of a new voice or sound.
To name a few, I’ve been following Justice Der with his electrifying guitar loop covers, since he was around 20k subs. Audrey Mika with her signature pink mic and paper clip earring - Recently signed under UMG’s Spinnup division!! Who did an interview with my friend Elliot right before she blew up. Aries with his “made in 2 mins” series.
These creators keep a consistent schedule of uploading unique covers and then dropping their own music wooo !
Some other vids I’ve been paying attention to:
Rei ami - 6k subs and 100k views on this vid oh we love u youtube algorithm (now im in love w her)
Jasper Bones - 9K subs and 100k views on this vid too bless up algorithm (he plays sofar sounds shows and live shows with his own music now too))
Well that’s a wrap! Thanks for sticking around. LMK if you found these links/videos informative or cool. I’m really open to feedback about this format.
Also, lmk what you are listening to or finding in your corners of the internet!
If you know someone who would like this article pls shareeeee >
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