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In an average week, there's one type of music that I spend more time listening to than any other, and that's lo-fi hip-hop.At work, unless I'm sound designing or reviewing audio, I have lo-fi on pretty much all the time.
The music is peaceful and inviting, and it puts me in this zen-like state where I can get things done without feeling stressed.
I also put it on when there's something on my mind that I want to think through, whether it's about family, my business, or just life in general.
So lo-fi is this super useful thing in my personal and professional life, but I've never really known much about it.Why does lo-fi work so well?Is it actually doing anything to my body or my brain?Who even makes this music?
And what's the lo-fi community like? This story was adapted from the Endless Thread podcast.Here's co-host Ben Brock Johnson.
Let producer Norah Sachs and I introduce you to Kevin.
I had a really kind of atypical path through school.I was a high school dropout, and I kicked out over and over again.
As a kid, I got all these diagnoses really young about why, what was wrong with me, and that kind of just pursued me through my life, right?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?
Kevin would eventually be diagnosed with ADHD, which was listed as the source of his academic challenges.
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.
Part of which was just learning how he could do work in the right way.
Really early on what I found is it was really beneficial for me to sort of 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 kind of ambient music kind of low-key stuff going on.
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.
It made me feel calm and safe.And I would kind of curate my workspace to not just use the music, but I would include the visuals when I could.
As in, have a screen up with the actual visual as well as listening to the music while he was studying.
Kevin completed his undergrad degree, then started working on a doctoral program at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
At one point during his studies... I always joke, like, I was working in the lab late one night, which was accurate, and I, um... He was working in the lab late one night.
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.
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.
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 live stream of what is known as Lo-Fi Hip-Hop. It's a type of mostly instrumental hip-hop that features down-tempo beats with some low-fidelity elements thrown in.
It sort of creates a perfectly imperfect, kind of nostalgic, atmospheric, uber-chill vibe.
It really helps you focus and calm and kind of get in your peaceful place.
Emily Heap, a 29-year-old marketing specialist and makeup artist from Cleveland, is a lot like Kevin.
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.
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.
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.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's 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.
The animation transitions from day into night.The cityscape outside the window gets dark and lights come on in other windows.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.
But then back in April, I was getting ready for work.I had 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.
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.
Hi guys, I just woke up.Everything is happening all at once.Let's go over the Lo-Fi Girl lore.
Before Lo-Fi Girl and her cat disappeared from the animation, a blue light in a far-off window had started blinking.
And they turn their heads and they look at it because that is not normal.Normally she's looking at the computer.
The shot zooms closer and closer to that blue window until it's inside.A door appears.
And that's when I started to realize that something a little deeper was going on.
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.
I was right!And he has a dog.
This is Emily's TikTok'd 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, steady 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 accoutrement sprinkled around him.And fittingly, his channel is Synthwave Radio.Beats to chill or game to.
So, Ben, in the end, Lo-Fi 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.
Lo-Fi Girl, like I said, has always been kind of in the background, just a fun little character that'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.
Kevin defines parasocial this way.
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.
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.
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.
With the lo-fi girl 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.
I noticed that when she would get back to work in the loop, where she would sort of kind 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, 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?
Kevin was so intrigued that he ended up co-writing an academic paper about lo-fi music and the online community around it.
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.
And I saw a lot of this thing of people talking about, oh, the lo-fi girl, she works in studies like I do.She's this kind of partner, this almost, you know, not a friend, but like someone that you relate to.
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.
There's something inviting, but not over-engaging.
There's 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 to be distracting or to really encourage you to lose yourself in it.
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.And in addition to the nostalgia-bathed 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.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.
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.
I think part of what's useful about this is 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.
After the break, how lo-fi affects the rhythms of the brain and the explosion of the lo-fi multiverse.
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Congratulations to Eric Lauber for getting last episode's mystery sound right. That's the old login sound for the Ubuntu operating system.The sound was apparently created by a community contributor named Peter Savage.
It was enabled by default for about six years, from 2006 to 2012.Since then, Ubuntu hasn't had a login sound enabled by default.And here's this episode's mystery sound.
If you know where that sound came from, tell us at the web address mystery.20k.org.Anyone who guesses it right will be entered to win one of our super soft 20,000 Hz t-shirts.
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Growing up, Kevin Weatherwax had a really hard time staying focused.Eventually, he was diagnosed with ADHD.
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.
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 undiagnosed ADHD.Not tricky.
Anybody, I think, should be able to say that.That's what it feels like.Because it was hard to get a diagnosis.Yeah, yeah.It had to be an extreme problem.But if you were functional or able to engage with the space, you aren't going to get it.
And as an adult, you can't really.And so it's like, what are people to do?
Yeah, that's, yeah.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.
Me too.Which is why I accidentally have two dissertation tracks that I'm having competing for which one's going to be the final one.One is on my human robots interaction research and one is on the Lo-Fi stuff.
When it comes to assistive technology for neurodivergent people, Kevin says he's observed a strong tendency for interventions that seek to sort of transform someone from neurodivergent to neurotypical or neurotypical behaving rather than being augmentive.
which is what I really like about the lo-fi.My relationship to lo-fi is part of my work and study practice.And what I see other neurodivergent people also having, which is that it's augmented.
It's not about making me not be neurodivergent or behave as someone who's neurotypical.It just helps buttress some of the areas where I struggle while building up my strengths.
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... It kind of like tickles your brain the right way, if that makes sense.It just like scratches that itch in there.And I'm like, oh, it's perfect.
Yep.And I can keep working.
Yes.Yes.It helps me focus so much.
Maybe it's a pharmaceutical company that's behind it.Who knows?
Maybe.Maybe.They're like, there's an Adderall shortage.Give them lo-fi.
So we know, anecdotally at least, that these lo-fi 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 nonkens?
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,
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.
Over the decades, Connie has witnessed music work magic as medicine.
Is music a net positive on brain function?
Oh, absolutely.I think I could say that.I think the science supports that too.
There was the old man who had a stroke and couldn't talk, but then all of a sudden started singing Old Man River.
And the young girl who had seizures every night before she was about to fall asleep.Until Connie created and prescribed a music track.
The rhythm would gradually get slower and slower and slower, so it would ease her brain into a more relaxed state.Hmm.
Exactly.And it actually worked.So I was very happy.
The reason music is used as an in-therapy is because it engages all parts of the brain in different ways.
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.
The main thing is that there's hyperactivity in different areas of the brain.
Which makes it hard to focus.
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.
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.
This was like a galaxy brain explosion moment for me, Nora.Connie says, entrainment is basically when one stimulus influences another.
The pulse at which those rhythms take place is now influencing the pulse at which the neurons are firing.
What that makes me think of is like music can serve almost as a metronome for the way that the brain is functioning and organizing information.
Absolutely.So think about how a musician uses a metronome.
They use it to stay in time in their performance or to be able to perform the music with other musicians.
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.
One of the reasons lo-fi hip-hop music is such an awesome metronome for folks with hyperactive brains is because it's slow.
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.
Also, Connie says, it doesn't usually have a huge range of frequencies or sudden changes in pitch, which 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.
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 lo-fi music does have an influence on brain activity.
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.
Another very exciting discovery.There's so much more to the lo-fi world than just our old digital friend lo-fi girl and her new friend, or is it boyfriend, lo-fi boy.
If that channel really was the big bang, the lo-fi universe has just kept on expanding and diversifying.
Even beyond other very popular and very similar channels with almost identical names like College Music's lo-fi hip hop radio Mellow Chill Study Beats.
Yeah, it's real close to home.
There's Nature Lo-Fi, Medieval Lo-Fi, Zelda Lo-Fi, Animal Crossing Lo-Fi, Star Wars Lo-Fi, Taylor Swift lo-fi.There's cooking lo-fi and workout lo-fi, Beatles lo-fi and K-pop lo-fi.
You can basically pick a thing that people are into, then type in lo-fi, and chances are, something will come up.
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 going to make that.
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.Is Lo-Fi Girl good for music?Or is it, in a weird way, part of this general degradation of artistry?Let the algorithms take over and remove the person behind the art, et cetera?
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 seem 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.
So yeah, this is an upcoming track that I'm working on.It's not quite finished.
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.
Antoni is based in Northwest England, and he's a full-time producer, mostly of lo-fi hip-hop stuff.And now he's started messing around with field recordings as well, of things like leaves crunching and twigs snapping, very ASMR.
And before that, I sort of started off releasing 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 sound palette.
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.
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 a few hundred a week to tens of thousands a week.
Then they asked him to write a song for this compilation album they released called 1AM Study Sessions.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.
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.
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.
It works both ways because whilst it's not necessarily artist-focused, the model quite naturally works in the artist's favor 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 and with a lot of artists it can be a real struggle to get the fan base and the following to get any substantial earnings from Spotify and Apple and that sort of thing.
You get paid three or four dollars per thousand streams 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 100 songs, 200 songs while they're studying, which reflects in much higher streaming.
And as an artist, it supported me financially to make this my full-time career.Without this, I don't think I'd be a full-time music producer.I owe my career, really, to Lo-Fi Guild for supporting my music.
Nora, you may not be a Lo-Fi Girl superfan, but what do you come away from all of this with?
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 Monda Loops 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 musacified 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 on this record label.
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 going to cherish and keep jamming to.
That story came from the Endless Thread podcast, though we made some edits for time and adult language.Endless Thread is all about the vast and curious ecosystems of online communities.
On their show, you'll hear untold histories, unsolved mysteries, and all kinds of jaw-dropping stories.In recent episodes, they've explored YouTube's sword fighters, catfishing scams, and how to fight off a shark.
Subscribe to Endless Thread right here in your podcast player. 20,000 Hz is produced out of the sound design studios of DeFacto Sound.Hear more at DeFactoSound.com.
Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston.This episode was produced and co-hosted by me, Nora-Ruth Valerie Sachs, with help from Endless Thread co-hosts Ben Brock Johnson and Dean Russell.Dimitri, if you're out there, still love to talk.
Our sound designer on this episode was the super chill, Paul Vajkas.The rest of our team is Samantha Joshi, Matt Reed, Amory Sebertson, Quincy Walters, Emily Jankowski, and Grace Tatter.
I'm Dallas Taylor.Thanks for listening. What you're hearing right now is called the post-roll of a podcast.In podcasting, the post-roll is any ads or announcements that happen after the credits.
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