Monetized: How Lofi Girl Went from Background Image to $6 Million Lifestyle Brand and Record Label

👋 Happy Saturday team!

Today we’re diving into the story of Lofi Girl.

What You’ll Learn Today:

• How Lofi Girl effectively utilized YouTube's algorithm to build their brand and redirect viewers to other platforms.

• Understand the importance of fostering a strong community around your content.

• The value of community, the potential of marketing funnels, and the importance of adapting to new platforms and revenue streams.

Product of the Week: Speechify

Wish you had more time to read your favorite newsletters? Download Speechify and turn every newsletter you read into a podcast!

—This is an affiliate link.

💡 Creator Profile: Lofi Girl

1.6 billion views. That’s how many times the Lofi Girl YouTube channel has been viewed. That’s more views than ABC’s Dancing with the Stars, which has had a total of 1.57 billion views for its entire 30-season run. In less than a decade, Lofi Girl has built one of the largest communities on YouTube with a simple, yet effective approach.

🧠 Behind the Brand:

Today, Lofi Girl is one of the most popular channels on YouTube, but that wasn't always the case. Like most entrepreneurial endeavors, the story of how this brand came together has been a complete roller coaster. Lofi Girl originated under the name ChilledCow in March of 2015 and streamed lofi hip-hop for those who needed background music while working or studying.

In 2017, the channel faced a copyright claim for using artwork based on Shizuku Tsukishima, which ultimately led to the channel being taken down. In September of 2017, ChilledCow rebranded and turned to its community for a new artwork. Juan Pablo Machado, a Colombian artist, responded to their call and created one of the most iconic images produced during the internet era. This image changed everything! The Lofi Girl branding replaced the ChilledCow brand and Lofi Girl became a household name.

Now that you’ve seen the image, it’s likely you won’t go another day without seeing it. As of today, Lofi Girl remains as one of the most popular GIFs on the internet and the image itself has become the face of the lofi hip-hop genre.

The Lofi Girl channel has amassed over 1.6 billion views and over 12.5 million subscribers, making it one of the most popular channels on YouTube. Their Lofi chill music runs on a non-stop stream that is live 24/7. This is an amazing feat and it’s one that can’t be replicated easily, but I’m sure inquiring minds have been dying to ask these two questions…

Where do they get their music from and how do they make money?

💰 How They Monetized:

The Lofi Girl channel has earned about $6 million since their inception in 2017. That’s $1,000,000 per year or about $2,700 per day. That’s a lot of money, but it’s a relatively low amount for a channel that streams non-stop and has the amount of attention that they have.

The truth is, Lofi girl doesn’t make the bulk of their money from YouTube AdSense, as ads only play during the beginning of a user engaging with their stream.

This makes complete sense, as no one wants to be interrupted with an ad while they’re studying or sleeping. So how do they make their money? It’s rather complex, but also quite genius.

As most of you know, streaming music to YouTube calls for an immediate copyright strike if you don’t have permission from the artist’s label. This means none of us can go create a Drake mix, stream it for 24 hours and pull in $2,000 a day. The channel would likely be taken down or all the revenue would be redirected to UMG, Drake’s current record label.

So how did Lofi Girl get around this? They created their own record label!

The music you hear on Lofi Girl’s YouTube channel, is actually music from their record label, Lofi Records. Artists submit their demos to Lofi Records, which reviews them and adds their music to the stream if accepted. This gives new artists the ability to potentially gain mass appeal while giving Lofi Records and the Lofi Girl YouTube channel an unlimited amount of content to share with their community. The music doesn't just stop at YouTube; Lofi Records earns revenue on streaming platforms, such as Apple Music, Spotify, and others. Every time one of their songs is streamed, Lofi Records receives a payout, which is then shared with the artists that created the songs. With over 500 songs uploaded to their Spotify playlist, the payout is likely significant.

The music we hear on YouTube is actually more of a marketing play than a revenue stream for Lofi Girl. This is where their funnel begins. They get their audience hooked on the music via YouTube’s algorithm and slowly pull them away from the YouTube platform to stream music on Apple Music or Spotify. By using YouTube as a marketing tool, Lofi Girl is able to build their brand and increase their exposure to a wider audience, while also generating revenue from AdSense. This is why I say their business strategy is genius, they’re basically getting paid to run a 24/7 ad!

In addition to their record label, the Lofi Girl brand has a massive cult following. They run a Discord server with over 800,000 active users, this provides a platform for fans to connect, share music and chat with each other. Within that Discord their’s a premium tier called “Lofi Girl+: The Lounge:”, here users get additional perks and benefits for a monthly subscription fee.

They also have a variety of merchandise available on their website, and lastly, they’ve done sponsorship for some pretty huge brands, such as, TikTok, Grammerly and HBO Max.

With all this, it’s clear that Lofi Girl is a pretty huge brand, in fact, I undersold in them in the headline, it turns out the $6M I quoted in is just a small portion of the companies revenue, they actually make a lot more when you factor in the record labels streams, their merchandise sales and their subscription model via Discord.

⚒️ Tools They Use:

Outside of YouTube, it is currently unclear what tools Lofi Girl uses to produce their content. Tools that will produce similar results can be found below.

• Logic Pro

• Streamlabs

• YouTube

🧑🏻‍💻 My Take:

Lofi girl is essentially elevator music, it’s a part of a genre that is known as music that’s meant to be ignored. It’s very clear that the business model of Lofi Girl is a solid one, however, it’s not the music itself that brings people back.

I didn’t highlight this much in the above article, but there are two really good take aways from how this brand created sustainable income.

Community: When the stream first launched, it was a space for people who studied to quickly vent and engage. The space became a safe haven for hard workers. They would talk about their struggles and to their surprise people would respond, either relating to their situation or helping them get through it. Ultimately, it became a support group for like-minded individuals. Community is really the driving force behind Lofi Girl and Lofi Records.

This is why the brand is so difficult to replicate. Due to the success of Lofi Girl, many have attempted to copy their business model, but few have been able to garner their community.

In the grand scheme of things, this brand has the potential to become Coca-Cola like. Everyone has their own rendition of the classic cola beverage, but nothing comes close to that red and white branding that we all know and love.

Funnel: Lofi Girl uses YouTube as their top funnel. This is genius and I think more creators need to take on the same business model.

YouTube doesn’t have to be your main source of income. Use the algorithm to your advantage, use it to find your audience. Once you do, redirect them to where you want them to be.

For example, with Monetized, I plan on making short-form content summarizing articles like the one you just read. I’ll explain how the creator makes money in 60 seconds.

At the end of the video or perhaps in the description of the video, I’ll leave the link to my newsletter for those who are interested to learn more about the background of creators and their monetization strategy.

I’m basically putting out an ad for my newsletter, but I’m being paid to do it (assuming you are a part of the YouTube partner program). If you’re a creator and are struggling to reach your audience, then use algorithmic platforms to find them. This type of reach won’t be free forever.

Extra Credit:

• 🎥 How to Make Music for Lofi Girl

• 🎥 Who is Behind Lofi Girl?

• 📖 How listening to uninterrupted noise helped millions to focus

That’s all we have for this weeks edition of Monetized. See you all on Twitter if you’re there: @keenanrivals