Lofi Records

Lofi Records is the label behind Lofi Girl, the YouTube channel where an animated girl sits writing by her window, headphones on, the cat watching the street, while a stream of beats runs around the clock. The channel began as ChilledCow and took the Lofi Girl name in 2021, and for millions of listeners it is simply where lofi hip hop lives: "beats to relax/study to", then synthwave, jazz and sleep radios built the same way. The label was set up in France in 2019 so the music on those streams could be its own.

The sound is the one the stream made famous and half the scene learned from. Soft keys, drums sitting back in the mix, a little vinyl dust, two-minute tracks with no sharp edges, music made to disappear behind a desk lamp while you work. The label does it at a scale nobody else in lofi reaches: more than 7,000 tracks in the catalog, over three billion streams, distribution through The Orchard and a publishing deal with Warner Chappell. A release here ends up on the Lofi Girl streams.

That is also why the door is narrow. Lofi Records takes no demos. New names come in through collaborations with artists already on the roster, and producers who got there talk about sending dozens of tracks before one was taken. The split is 50/50. If your music is warm, slow and made for the study stream, the way in is to work with a Lofi Girl artist first rather than to pitch the label cold.