MANILA, Philippines – YouTube livestream “lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to” is back after YouTube mistakenly suspended the page over the weekend.
The livestream, since it started streaming in 2018 has become known not just for its music but just as much for its video loop showing an anime girl doing her homework. When the page went down, some jokingly commented that finally, the girl had finished her academic duties.
YouTube admitted that the suspension of the account was a mistake, after the account owner ChilledCow brought it up on Twitter:
Thanks for flagging this to us! Our teams confirmed that this was a mistake on our side and your channel has now been reinstated. We’re sorry this happened! We've shared feedback with our review team to prevent similar errors from happening in the future. — TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) February 23, 2020
From the start of the stream on August 23, 2018 to its end on February 22, 2020, the stream amassed more than 13,000 hours of playtime, and 218 million views.
The Verge noted that channels like ChilledCow and another similar channel Chillhop Records operate in a “gray zone” on YouTube. YouTube has copyright tools in place – chief of which is its ContentID program – that allow musicians, publishers, and studios to easily track videos that use their music, and act on it with a takedown if they decide to.
Now while ChilledCow and Chillhop work with artists to get permission to feature their songs on the stream or use their own songs from their own label, there’s still a chance that someone will issue a takedown request. That’s possibly one of the scenarios that happened here.
ChilledCow thanked YouTube upon the reinstatement of his account:
My account has been unbanned, thank you from the bottom of my heart for the tremendous support, I'm grateful to have such an amazing community. I will launch the stream again as soon as possible pic.twitter.com/hcAKB5wXWb — ChilledCow (@ChilledCow) February 22, 2020
Shortly after reinstatement, the stream resumed, and anime girl continued her relentless pursuit of scholarly excellence, which you can check out here. – Rappler.com
