Lofi Girl: YouTube apologises after popular study music video is removed from platform

YouTube has apologised after deleting a hugely popular video from its platform.

The video is titled “lofi hip hop radio – beats to relax/study to” and shows a cartoon girl sat at her desk working while lyric-free study music plays.

It has been viewed more than 668 million times and is often used as a relaxation tool to help users while they complete their own tasks.

On Sunday (10 July), the people behind the channel, which has more than 10.7 million subscribers, tweeted that its most popular video had been removed due to “false copyright strikes”.

They shared a screenshot of their email from YouTube, which said that the clip “can no longer be played” on the website.

On Monday (11 July) morning, YouTube posted a response apologising for the mistake and confirming that the copyright claim was “abusive”.

“Confirmed the takedown requests were abusive & terminated the claimants account,” they tweeted.

YouTube confirmed that the clip had been removed by mistake (Twitter)
YouTube confirmed that the clip had been removed by mistake (Twitter)

“We’ve resolved the strikes + reinstated your vids – it can sometimes take 24-48 hours for everything to be back to normal! so sorry this happened & thx for your patience as we sorted it out.”

As of Tuesday (12 July) morning, the clip is still unable to stream.

Lofi Girl was created by French musician Dmitri in 2015. He used the username ChilledCow before changing it to Lofi Girl last year.