Lofi Girl (formerly ChilledCow) is a French YouTube channel and music label established in 2017. It provides livestreams of lo-fi hip hop music 24/7, accompanied by a Japanese-style animation of a girl studying or relaxing.
History
The YouTube channel "ChilledCow" was created by Dimitri on 18 March 2015. ChilledCow began streaming lo-fi hip hop music, branding it as relaxation music for those who are working or studying on 25 February 2017. The live stream was taken down by YouTube between July and August 2017 for using footage of the character Shizuku Tsukishima studying from the animated film Whisper of the Heart (1995). On September 2017, the livestream was later reinstated with a custom animation of a girl studying.
The music in ChilledCow's live streams was either released through the ChilledCow label or was used with permission from the artist. In February 2020, YouTube briefly removed the channel without explanation, but reinstated it after a public backlash. The original live stream that was stopped by the take-down was 13,000 hours long, making it one of the longest videos on YouTube.
On 18 March 2021, six years after the creation of the channel, it was announced that the channel would rebrand from ChilledCow to Lofi Girl. The YouTube community posts explained how Lofi Girl had become the icon of the channel, and that it would fit as the new channel name.
On 2 February 2022, the channel reached the milestone of ten million subscribers. The stream that was on at the time had been running since 22 February 2020, and had over seven million likes. The channel celebrated this by having a party event in the chat.
On 10 July 2022, YouTube took down two of the channel's streams ("beats to relax/study to" and "beats to chill/sleep to") after receiving a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown request from Malaysian record label FMC Music Sdn Bhd. The two streams had nearly 800 million combined views and had been streaming continuously for about 21,000 hours each. YouTube later confirmed that the copyright infringement claims were "abusive" and that the claimant's channel had been terminated. Lofi Girl resumed streaming on 12 July. According to a spokesman for FMC Music, the copyright claims were filed by hackers who had gained access to the company's YouTube account. Following the incident, Lofi Girl criticized YouTube for not investigating the claims more thoroughly and for not providing content creators an opportunity to appeal false claims.
On 11 April 2023, the channel launched a third live stream, "synthwave radio 🌌 - beats to chill/game to", featuring a boy with his pet dog next to him sitting in front of a desktop computer. The extensive teaser campaign accompanied the stream's launch: On 10 April 2023, the animation of the Lofi Girl and her cat disappeared. The audio music stream continued with a still visual background, but without record and track labels. Over the course of 24 hours, the video slowly zoomed in towards the open blue window. On 11 April at 5:00 PM UTC, the blue room could be clearly seen, and a new character entered with a small dog and began typing at a computer. The community dubbed the unnamed boy, "Synthwave Boy" "Synth Boy", or just "Lofi Boy". The following day, Lofi Girl's YouTube channel uploaded the character's entry animation with the title "Synthwave Launch 🌌 - Lofi Boy POV", confirming the new character's name.
Character
Lofi Girl streams are accompanied by an animation of a girl studying or relaxing who has come to be known as the Lofi Girl, the Lofi Study Girl, or the "24/7 lofi hip hop beats" girl (officially named Jade). The channel began using the Lofi Girl for its streams in March 2018.
Dimitri originally used the character Shizuku Tsukishima from the Studio Ghibli film Whisper of the Heart (1995) as the face of the channel, with footage of her studying or writing used in the streams. When the popularity of the streams ultimately led to the channel being taken down for copyright violations, Dimitri decided to maintain the Ghibli-esque aesthetic but with an original character and put out a call for artists.