One of the most popular and iconic music streams on YouTube, Lofi Girl’s lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to suddenly disappeared from the platform since two days ago due to a copyright strike from Malaysian-based music company, FMC Music Sdn Bhd Malaysia. Understandably, the incident caused uproar among fans of the stream, which up until today has over 668 million views.
YouTube has since reversed the takedown and even terminated FMC Music’s account after confirming that the copyright strike was ‘abusive’. However, it had already ended the stream’s two-year long run as the channel’s next stream would have to start from the beginning again rather than continuing from where it was before the takedown.
Furthermore, YouTube also clarfied that it would take up to 48 hours for the stream to be reinstated and apologised for the incident. On 10 July 2022, Lofi Girl addressed the incident on its Twitter account, saying that it was taken down by false copyright strikes.
Lofi Girl also shared an email by YouTube notifying the channel of the takedown which states that the request was issued by ‘FMC Music Sdn Bhd Malaysia’. Short for Fantasia Music City, the company is a Malaysian record label under Hui Hvang Enterprise with various local artists under its helm.
As shared by TechCrunch, Lofi Girl said that the music in the stream is released under its own record label, hence the channel has the proper rights to the music. The YouTube channel also said that it was not sure why FMC Music filed the complaint.
Following the revelation by Lofi Girl, fans of the channel began circulating the hashtag #BringBackLofiGirl to get YouTube’s attention. Fans even bombarded FMC Music’s social media with comments for its issuance of the copyright strike.
The incident also sparked debate on YouTube’s handling of false copyright strikes, whereby there seem to be no protection or manual review on the matter. Indeed, Lofi Girl represented a lot of creators on the platform when the channel lamented how such matters was out of their control and that there are no avenues to file an appeal or prevent similar incidents from happening.
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