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556 points greenie_beans | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.417s | source
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legitster ◴[] No.42466978[source]
This article is fascinating. But what's on display here is less of a nefarious plan from Spotify to replace famous Katy Perry with AI - instead we get to see something much more specific: a behind-the-scenes of how those endless chill/lo-fi/ambient playlists get created.

Which is something I've always wondered! How does the Lofi Girl channel on Youtube always have so much new music from artists I have never heard from?

The answer is surprising: real people and real instruments! (At least at the time of writing). Third-party stock music ("muzak") companies hiring underemployed jazz musicians to crank out a few dozen derivative songs every day to hack the algorithm.

> “Honestly, for most of this stuff, I just write out charts while lying on my back on the couch,” he explained. “And then once we have a critical mass, they organize a session and we play them. And it’s usually just like, one take, one take, one take, one take. You knock out like fifteen in an hour or two.” With the jazz musician’s particular group, the session typically includes a pianist, a bassist, and a drummer. An engineer from the studio will be there, and usually someone from the PFC partner company will come along, too—acting as a producer, giving light feedback, at times inching the musicians in a more playlist-friendly direction.”

I think there's an easy and obvious thing we can do - stop listening to playlists! Seek out named jazz artists. Listen to your local jazz station. Go to jazz shows.

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1. Balgair ◴[] No.42468806[source]
Check out Chillhop ( https://chillhop.com/radio/). Great little lofi studio out of Rotterdam. Good to the artists, from what I can tell.

Psalm Trees, an artist with them, just put out an interesting little 'double'-ish album here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmL9LvTYjMQ

He produced a whole jazz album just so he could sample from it for a lofi album. Absolutely mental workload.

There's a lot of crap in lofi, but also some real 'bangers' too : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU3yBo2szD8 (yes, really, 10 hours of great work, IMHO)

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2. xrd ◴[] No.42476187[source]
I want to know how you found this. Why do you say they are good to the artists? I would love to know how you cultivate your feed and from where you get your music information?
3. fakedang ◴[] No.42477846[source]
Psalm Trees is my jam! The song "Fever" got me into lofi music.