Exploring the weird and wonderful world of YouTube music
Since 2005, YouTube has been home to a unique community of creators. The video-sharing platform allowed users to establish a voice set trends and create a self-sustaining ecosystem of niche content. As well as being a main source of entertainment, thanks to an almost omniscient algorithm that always seems to cue up content tailored to your taste, newcomers and regulars can be sucked into ‘similar videos’ rabbit-holes for as long as possible.
Just over a decade ago, a viral video of a Canadian teen singing and playing the guitar catapulted Justin Beiber into teen-pop stardom. Since then, there has been a growing fleet of break-out artists who started pursuing their artistic journeys primarily on YouTube through meme-driven, sometimes cringe content. Artists like Joji, Tori Kelly and Pentatonix amongst others have used YouTube as their primary tool for distributing music, amassing millions of views on the videos, rivalling many artists on major labels.
Recently the platform launched its music streaming service ‘YouTube Music’ worldwide. With music remaining an integral part of YouTube’s content pool, a new generation of wacky, creative musicians, and content styles are also bound to emerge. Here are a few we have been obsessing over.
Slowed and Reverb
This music format involves slowing songs and adding reverb in order to give the music a somber and reflective texture. Accompanied by a video loop, usually from 80s anime, or older scenes from western animation, the remix amps the darkness and emotion of a record, reimagining popular and obscure records and breathing new life into classical records. Credit for pioneering this style goes to a Houston producer Jarylun Moore, known as Slater by his fans. According to Slater, he was inspired by the unique remixes of Houston legend DJ Screw, drawing from his characteristic ‘Chopped and Screwed’ style, Slater has ushered in a new remix style which has been duplicated on thousands of track and has quickly grown into a popular subgenre on YouTube.
Noteworthy Creators: slater!
Type Beats
YouTube’s SEO algorithm has given upcoming producers the holy-grail of creating profitable content, through making instrumentals and naming them after the mainstream artists that inspired the style. Type beats are often the trial grounds on which most aspiring rappers showcase their creative talent. Type beats represent a symbiotic relationship between the two most important aspects of hip hop and most popular music, production and MCing. Type beats as a medium provide a means of developing producers to showcase their talents, refine their skill, build a fan base, as well as earn monetary value through the leasing and licensing of their music. Ubiquitous on YouTube, even mainstream artists have found useful production from type beats. Songs ‘The Race’ and ‘Panda’ were originally type beats recorded into smash hits.
Noteworthy Creators: Pluto, SAHARA
DJ Mixes
Djs have long played an important role in popular music as they have direct access to the masses in clubs and party spaces. Back in the day, you needed to be in the club to hear the hottest mixes from the best DJs, these days you can get the party started from the comfort of your home by simply cuing a DJ mix featuring screwed or re-imagined hits. The stringent copyright safeguards in place on YouTube has also pushed DJs to be more experimental and innovative ways to mix records, laying emphasis to their unique styles and imagination. Deeprot is a YouTube channel which showcases new DJ mixes from around the world daily, and other platforms like Boilerroom streaming live DJ sets.
Noteworthy Creators: DeepRot
Mash-Ups
Since Soulja Boy rick-rolled his way to mainstream success, the concept of switching vocals and beats is not new. This has not stopped producers from trying to see what popular songs would sound like if they were delivered on other popular instrumentals. Wonder what it would be like if Britney Spears and Kanye remixed ‘Power’, or if Travis was featured on a Gorillaz track, say less because channels like ‘William Maranci’ have gone through the technical effort of making this possible for you. Whilst these remixes show a unique talent as vocals may be produced by changing tempo and pitch, it showcases the uniform structure of music. With producers switching vocals for popular production or even their own production as is the case with a producer named ‘Forgotten’, this might just be the next big music trend on YouTube.
Noteworthy Creators: William Maranci
Beats you can chill/ study to
Need a playlist to help you concentrate before a big test, need to relax after a long day at work, or simply a group of songs to put you to sleep, ‘Lofi Beats You Can Chill to’ is a popular playlist collection of calming and ‘focusing’ music, tailor-made to suit the mood you are trying to set.
Noteworthy Creators: ChilledCow
Reaction/Review Videos
The world of music on YouTube music also cannot be discussed without mentioning review channels and reaction channels which have helped sustain ‘YouTubing’ as an the art form by providing context and analysis, as well as showcasing and championing upcoming talent. As technology improves and the music industry becomes accessible to more people, the boundaries of music-making and innovation will continue to be pushed. Sometimes out of boredom and excessive creativity, we create magic.
Noteworthy Creators: Shawn Cee, The Needle Drop, Luke James