Intro: Lofi hip-hop radio 24/7 | Expectations vs. Reality
With famous success stories like the lofi Girl, or Chillhop radio and now many many more. We want to know more about all these Lofi Radios on Youtube. I’m talking about the Lofi hip-hop radio 24/7, available anytime, any day, and offering nice sounding lofi music to study to, to code to or just to relax to. Is it hard to set up? What are the things we need to think about? And what should we expect?
Setting up a lofi hip hop radio 24/7 live on Youtube
To create your YouTube live lofi hip-hop radio, you have several choices and different kind of budget, however it often come down to these:
- You have a computer and network that is available to you, and that you can use a little bit like a server kind of way. Meaning a computer that you don’t use, but that could serve you as a server.
- You hire and pay per month for a service, that offers you everything you need to have a radio ongoing, often allowing you to control the so-called computer remotely.
Depending on your setup, feel free to choose the method of your choice. You can even come up with your own way, I’m sure 😉
For now, we’ll focus on the second method. Let’s hire a company to do that for us.
Live hosters companies
Choosing the right provider
By doing my research both on Youtube, Google, and such, I figured out that one of the ways that several live radio streamers were using was called: “Ohbubble”.
I would like to point out that I am not affiliated with them or earn anything by mentioning their name. More on the other side, since I am now using their service, as I am writing this post. Yes indeed, you will see in the end of the article, but WE DID IT! We created our own Lofi hip-hop radio 24/7 available on Youtube. So you can feel safe, reading this article, as I will explain everything as it is, at least from my perspective.
This is the one we’ve tried so far, they will offer a different plans and you will need to personally contact them in order to see which available plan they have at the moment. https://www.ohbubble.com/servers
The cheapest plan is called: PLATINUM PLAN
It allows you to have 1 server with Picture as a background starting at $29.99 /monthly
Then you got the SAPPHIRE PLAN
It allows you to have 1 server with Pictures, GIF,s or video as background – starting at $39.99/monthly – you can stream at 720p at 30 FPS at max.
You can then move on to bigger plans if needed which will improve your stream resolution quality and rapidity obviously. These premium plans are GOLD or DIAMOND.
What is included in a 24/7 Streaming service Hoster
You may ask yourself, what do you get with such hosting offers? Basically, you get what you expect, access to a sort of “remote desktop”, allowing you to access another computer from anywhere, using a special link that you receive within your first month of subscription. On this server, you can download software to get you started, but the software that is automatically included is OBS. For those who don’t know OBS, it’s one of the most famous streaming software available on the market right now. Basically, it allows you to create your own scene, your own setup so that your lofi hip-hop radio 24/7 looks good.
There is a little tricky part, here that you will probably encounter. Setting up the”Artist – Name of the Song” displaying automatically while playing. And this is done by installing an add-on that is called: SNIP. The very cool thing with SNIP is that it will synchronize with your streaming platform, in our case, we’re using Spotify.
So each time a song is played on my Spotify client (launched on the new server), the name and title of a track played on my lofi hip-hop radio 24/7 is displayed live. All you need to do then is to design the way the text is displayed and find a cool font that suits this need.
When I started with OHBUBBLE, I asked for help to get started with the streaming part for my lofi hip-hop radio 24/7 and they provided me with this tutorial here.
My experience with my Lofi hip-hop radio 24/7 Hosted by OhBubble
So like I said, after doing the research, several fingers pointed to OhBubble, so I chose them and was determined to choose the cheapest plan. I contacted them as you need to do so in order to know which plan is available. They kindly told me that they didn’t have any PLATINUM plan left so I would have to take the “SAPPHIRE PLAN” at 39.99 Monthly.
I had a few questions of course, like technical and so on. But since I am thinking about my lofi radio in long term, I told myself, let’s try this for real. So I said let’s do it.
Administrating a Lofi hip-hop radio 24/7:
It’s extremely important that you are aware that you can’t stop the subscription all of a sudden with OhBubble, I mean you need to use their service for a while before you can stop your subscription. Since it takes them around 1 month to set up your server.
You first need to think ahead and think ok so it will take 1 month to get the server up and running, then you just can’t stop the subscription just like that, you probably need to try it for at least a few months, I’d say 5 or 6 to begin with.
Then if you are not satisfied, of course, you may stop the subscription, but just so you get the picture, It’s not a plug-and-play situation, where you can stop at any time, without any cost.
How is it really?
See it more like a real person behind OhBubble, setting up manually each server and taking the time it takes to make it available, so yeah you can’t start your Lofi hip-hop radio 24/7. However, if you are not 100% sure you want to try that for real. It means for at least 6 months or even a year, sleep on it =)
If you’re curious, you can even have a look at OhBubble terms and conditions for a better understanding.
Other possible Live streaming hosting services
Concerning the other live streaming hosting services, I invite you to read this article that explains a bit more about them: https://www.dacast.com/blog/streaming-server-hosting-live-streaming-vod/
Everything will depend on your ambition and how you want to start it.
Do you want to make your own lofi hip-hop radio for real? or not?
What made me choose OhBubble? Well, the lofi community is kind of small, I asked a bit around and heard several times the name “OhBubble”. I told myself, ok there must be a reason for that. Let’s try it out! Until now, I am not disappointed by their service, everything is working as it should so far.
An incident with the live stream Lofi hip-hop radio 24/7
While having a Lofi hip-hop radio 24/7 seems like a piece of cake, when you’re using a third-party service such as OHBUBBLE or many others.
You may encounter troubles, such as cuts, connection issues, and maybe even hackers that penetrate your own servers. It’s not a pink world out there!
Another thing to take into consideration is that you need to use a Music streaming service such as Spotify for example to play your music nonstop.
The cut may also come from that music streaming service for some kind of reason. Maybe you’ve been playing this playlist of yours for too long. Therefore it’s great to be cautious and careful and always check the status of your Lofi hip-hop radio 24/7 and your Youtube Channel.
YES! It happened to me -_-
Since I launched my own lofi hip-hop radio 24/7, it happened only once that I had the connection cut, however it wasn’t the server’s fault, to be honest!
The only time I had trouble, was my Spotify account that got disconnected, probably because my Radio playlist was playing for too long. Alternatively, it could also have been the fact that there were too few tracks on my lofi hip hop radio playlist.
So a good solution, in this case, is to make sure that you have a consequent amount of tracks in your lofi playlist or whatever genre you guys are into 😉 If you need tips and tricks to create your own playlist, make sure to visit this article about how to get more followers on your spotify playlists.
How to get people listening to your lofi hip hop radio 24/7?
Well, obviously that is the tricky part here. Since we are focusing on Youtube 24/7 live stream radios here. If you are already kind of big on Youtube, it will be easy as hell for you to get people coming into your live stream, live lofi hip-hop radio 24/7.
However, if your channel is brand new, and you don’t have any following there, it will get harder for sure. Even if you are saying kind of big on another social media channel. It’s hard to migrate all your followers to a new one. I believe the best practice here, would be to try to become big on youtube. In this regard, any piece of info you can get about how to get big on youtube will make sense.
Marketing
It is probably something to focus on, doing ads regularly. Talking about your new lofi hip-hop radio 24/7 around you. Whether it is on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. Another cool way to get heard is by offering contests or such to get featured in your lofi hip-hop radio 24/7.
In these contests, you can have full control over how you present them of course.
The tricky part here is to think about copyright ownership and things like whether monetization is authorized or not.
Yes, Youtube doesn’t like it when you do not have the right to use someone else’s work, and you could have all your hard work, put down to zero, or even your channel removed if you’re unlucky.
The Copyrights
That is not my favorite subject. However, it’s a must when we are talking about sharing other’s people music around the globe. You need authorization. So how do you get it? Well the first and easiest way, is to simply ask for it. Ask for it by creating a Google form for example.
There are plenty of channels, using this method. They would have a link for people to submit their music to. In this link there would be a contract, with terms and conditions, allowing them to have the copyrights and the right of monetizing the lofi track in question.
To simplify the task here, instead of creating my own form, I decided to choose to use the website: Submithub, since I am a curator on their channel.
This will allow me to get the authorization of all the artists I promote on my channel. Their website is amazing if you do not know it. It’s the perfect place to promote your music. Also if you are a curator.
Each time I get submissions, I get to choose if the track fits my playlist or not. I can also choose if I share a track that has Copyright authorized or not. Monetization, on or off? Of course in an ideal world, you would want every artist to authorize you to have the copyrights and the monetization. That’s the dream when you are on Youtube. Why?
The Rules
Because Youtube is very strict. Indeed Youtube often starts “infringement” situations when they believe that you are not the copyright owner of a song. The song is protected by a distributor or a production company.
If you do have the copyright document signed and the monetization authorization as well, you can feel safer. This is quite a lot to take in, I know. However, this is how it’s working right now.
Traffic?
So you may disregard all this, and put out any song you like for sure. This could get traffic to your channel and your lofi hip-hop radio. However, you wouldn’t be able to monetize it just yet, and you would risk being completely banned from Youtube.
So always think about the long term, and what your goal is with your lofi radio and your 24/7 Youtube stream. Do you really want to create something in the long term, a real channel? Or are you just doing some kind of crisis, where you want what you don’t have? It certainly isn’t as ideal as it looks.
As it does require some work and sometimes even some hard work. However, with the right mentality. You can overcome whichever challenge that comes on the way. So stay strong my padawans =)
The concurrence
It is tough nowadays. If you search for lofi hip-hop radio 24/7 on Youtube, you will find many many active radios. Some even have several radios running 24/7.
There are famous names like lofi girl or Chill hop music but there are also emerging names that have somehow build up a following, I’m talking about STEEZYASFUCK, LTB Music or Nice guys when it comes to Bedroom pop music, I know they are THE reference.
Viewers
Typically these channels will have between 200 to 20k live viewers. Most frequently between 200 – 700 I’d say. For now, my channel has mostly 1 viewer live and it’s often me haha ^_^ but I’m not too discouraged yet. I haven’t put a lot of effort to grow on youtube yet.
I’ll see how it goes. I’m still on the learning curve and enjoying the process so far. Maybe I’ve been lazy. Most likely, but it’s a process.
Maybe after reading this article, you will feel like having a look at my own lofi radio reading this page 😉 Then I would have won, and gained some following, by sharing my knowledge.
Truly I really hope it helps, and it’s sincere! <3
Observing what works
Looking at what’s going on around you and in every other channel, you realize what you should focus on. All the good lofi hip-hop radio 24/7 has great designs, top-quality drawings and top-notch animation. The music selection is well made, and often oriented towards Coding and studying.
There is no secret, so if you want to stand out, you can try anything else for sure, however, you will need a certain aesthetic, a certain quality in both the music and the sound, as well as the artwork and animation work.
What is the Budget of a lofi hip-hop radio 24/7?
What’s the budget for all this? Well, if you’re a techy guy and have both the knowledge, the gear, and the connection, it may cost you 0, to be honest. However, you will need to be patient to see some traffic on your channel, unless you’re already famous.
Yeah so in dreamland, it cost zero and you may get free traffic coming into your channel. However, on a more realistic basis, you will need to invest some kind of money to have your lofi hip-hop radio 24/7 up and running on your new Youtube channel.
My Estimation for a lofi hip-hop radio 24/7 + Marketing
I’d say that a possible price for everything could be around 70 – 80 dollars per month if you want to see some results. I believe 40 dollars for the server hosting, and about 30 – 40 dollars of advertisement running continuously.
The ideal solution is if you are not willing to invest in advertising and even if you are planning to invest in it maybe later then. It’s to focus on making content on Youtube. Find a way to create a real channel. That’s probably the most efficient way to make your lofi hip-hop radio 24/7 stand out. If you have a channel with only one live streaming and that’s it. I don’t believe that this whole thing could work. Why?
Analysing the concurrence
Because if you analyze the concurrence, and what other curators and labels out there are doing. They all have this in common, they all have a lot of content on Youtube. All the content they already have built, helps them retarget and redirect their following to their live streaming lofi hip-hop radio 24/7.
Conclusion
So what are we waiting for? Creating your own lofi hip-hop radio is the way to go! So let’s do it. There you go, like with everything, it’s the consistency that will pay off, once again. The CONSISTENCY my friends! Godamnit, I knew it. Well, at least I know now what to focus on.
Putting some content out there, for the world to see, for the world to listen, to feel. Transforming my musical skills into tremendously skilled musical ears. Finding the music that could relax the most minds possible. Taking the time to share, my findings. Taking the time to listen to all the submissions I received, with attention and care. Without hurting anybody.
More than just a lofi hip-hop radio 24/7, this could be a way of life. A way to make others happy, others calmer. Helps coders to find the patience to debug whatever error they’re stuck on. Helping students manage all the mountains of work they have. Or just make you happy 😊 .
What if it was all about that, make yourself happy? lofi hip-hop radio 24/7 and happy 😊
Find more news about lofi hip hop
We’re always on the search for more info about the music that we love at Widen Island, lofi hip hop music. We’re planning to put out a lot of content about both lofi music and bedroom pop. Whether it’s about making better beats. Testing new gear or software.
Or just reviewing a lofi tapes, or artist’s releases and talking about music promotion. We’re interested in everything. Make sure to check the latest new of our blog. If you would like to cooperate with us, you are very welcome to contact info@widenisland.com or on Instagram @widen_island. We’ll make sure to get back to you.
/Edwin