27/05/2026
I've been on YouTube for around 13 years now, the majority of my life, and it's been the primary way I listen to music for most of that time. I have a spotify account, and a folder of music on other sites (bandcamp, soundcloud, etc.) but these are only for when something specific I want isn't on YouTube. As such, YT is also one of the ways I find new music. Most of my music-related recommendations are things I've already listened to multiple times, and sometimes other things by the same artists or from the same channels, but occasionally the inscrutable algorithm decides I might want to try something completely different.
Sometime around 2018 I got recommended Windows96's One Hundred Mornings, a dreamy 80s-style album that had effectively gone viral shortly after release.
I enjoyed it, and as such I began to be shown other albums with similar aesthetics, such as Luxury Elite's World Class and ２８１４'s Birth of a New Day (新しい日の誕生), which I also gave a try. This was my introduction to the Vaporwave genre.
Statistically as someone reading this blog post you probably know what Vaporwave is. Originally a movement led primarily by Millennials, early Vaporwave is epitomised by the equally viral 2011 album Floral Shoppe, released under Ramona Andra Langley's "Macintosh Plus" alias. Formerly described as an intentional commentary on 80s and 90s nostalgia and the consumerism intrinsically tied with it, by the late 2010s the genre had mostly been commandeered by more sincere artists creating their own distinct variations on this broad "vibe", making the question of what even counts as Vaporwave somewhat difficult to answer. In addition, the primary audience of this trend was increasingly Gen Z, a generation that had no 80s or 90s nostalgia for this music to evoke, a contradiction that was and is still commonly poked fun at.
By 2020 Vaporwave was less of a distinct music genre and more of an umbrella term containing and adjacent to a very wide range of "aesthetics" and vibes, developing alongside internet culture. And that's a key thing, instead of aiming to fit under a specific genre many of these albums aim simply to convey a specific feeling, one usually supported by its album cover and often the name as well. The new Vaporwave was a look as much as a sound, one of tacky gradients and empty malls and cities at night, with album names like Dream Desert (夢の砂漠) also conveying the intended mood before you even listen to the music itself. To put it plainly, these albums are elevator pitches.
In the pre-internet era, when listening to a full album required the heavy investment of purchasing it in physical form, the strongest signal as to whether or not something was worth buying was what other people told you was worth buying. An interesting album name and cover was a factor, but people primarily bought albums because they already trusted the artist, because it was associated with something else they trusted, or because their friends were into it. By comparison, I had no idea who Windows96 was or what they're known for at first glance. The only information I had was the artist name, the album name, the cover art, and that around half a million people had watched the video. But the cost of listening had dropped to near zero, and these factors piqued my interest enough for me to spare a minute to give the album a listen and see if I liked it. And many of the video's comments expressed the same sentiment: That the inscrutable algorithm had shown them this out of the blue, that they liked the look, and that they're glad they clicked. One Hundred Mornings had launched a relatively new and unknown artist into the public eye purely because its elevator pitch was working.
However, the YouTube video for One Hundred Mornings wasn't actually posted by Windows96 (aka Gabriel Eduardo) themselves. They had their own channel which they had been posting their music to, but OHM had been reposted from the original Bandcamp page to YouTube by Vapor Memory, a self-described non-monetized "archive and virtual venue designed for optimal music discovery" which had been mass-uploading other artists' Vaporwave music (and other adjacent genres) since 2015, with their very first upload being Macintosh Plus' Floral Shoppe. This was far from the first time this album had been uploaded to YouTube though, at least half a dozen other uploads since 2011 had already reached six-digit or seven-digit view counts, having all reuploaded either from the original Bandcamp page or each other. The original artist never uploaded Floral Shoppe to YouTube.
Gabriel had also either never uploaded OHM to their own channel or deleted it to not compete with the popular Vapor Memory upload. This common practice of reusing and reuploading others' music is a very complicated topic both legally and ethically, with a wide range of dissenting opinions. It is the reason Vaporwave has grown as much as it has, it is how much of the music itself was created in the first place, it's done by different people for different reasons with various levels of good or bad faith, and all of this is most strongly apparent in the genre's hottest new form: Barber Beats.
In April 2016, Hawaiian artist Haircuts for Men released когда зло господствует to their Bandcamp. Three years later in September 2019, Vapor Memory reuploaded the album to YouTube. By 2020 the video had passed 200,000 views, and it was recommended to me because I had been watching other videos from the channel. I saw it, I clicked it, and I was introduced to the genre now known as Barber Beats.
From a vibes point of view, this album is very weird. The title and song names are Google-translated Russian, the artist's unconventional name gives away little, and the cover art features a very freaky drawing set in a striking blue and grey palette. None of this really conveys the vibe of the music itself, which turns out to a chill downtempo sound reminiscent of lo-fi hip-hop. It's easy to see why this elevator pitch works; The unique, striking look and the non-English title breed curiosity, and the lo-fi music is tasteful and easy to like. The only issue is that it is entirely plundered.
The songs in this album and the others HFM has released aren't just sampled from other copyrighted songs, they're usually slowed down and slightly modified versions of other copyrighted songs in their entirety, primarily niche soul and lounge music. These low-effort remixes would be packaged together into albums and released by HFM to Bandcamp, at which point other third parties reupload them to YouTube with the aim of spreading them further. YouTube almost always auto-detects the original songs, usually leading to the videos being demonitized and sometimes taken down. For example, the Vapor Memory repload shown above has two of the tracks excluded due to copyright issues. However, Bandcamp performs no such checks, and to make matters more controversial HFM had also begun selling their albums as physical media through the site.
The original Bandcamp uploads do not list the songs that have been sampled. The only indication of the music's unoriginality at all is HFM's short bio: "i take no credit. everything is plundered." (it was then changed to say "i take some credit. but most everything is plundered" after HFM began producing some more original works). There is frequent discussion online regarding the morality of producing and sharing music in this way, and what changes should ideally be made; Pad Chennington has done a fantastic video on the topic that goes a lot deeper into it than I will here, but regardless of the issues this was a very fast-growing subgenre in the early 2020s. The largest YouTube videos, at least those that hadn't been taken down, were soon entering million-view territory.
Due to the broad appeal of this novel subgenre and the ease of producing such music, a wealth of copycat artists quickly sprung up with their own albums and mixes, ranging from obvious clones of HFM's style to more original variations. One of the biggest competitors in the space was Macroblank, who unlike HFM was uploading directly to YouTube and who was soon surpassing the HFM albums in view count.
The other aspiring music plunderers were also vying for viewers' attention, some more enduring than others: Oblique Occasions, Modest by Default, slowerpace 音楽, GODSPEED 音, vcr-classique, and so on and so on. Since these artists pull from the same pool of sources, many of them inevitably end up creating songs that use the same sample just pitched to different speeds, or occasionally the exact same speed. In addition, as more and more of the samples are used it becomes more and more difficult to release unique Barber Beats albums, leading most of the artists to slow their rate of release, experiment with other genres, or quit uploading entirely. HFM gradually began deviating from their usual sound, nowadays releasing albums in all sorts of styles from ambient to more upbeat hip-hop to hard electronic music, although their newer albums have failed to gain as much traction as their early work. Macroblank has remained more focused, still frequently releasing distinctly "Barber Beats" albums along with the occasional foray into adjacent sounds and styles. Importantly, these newer albums continue to receive consistently high views, indicating that this genre is more than a short-lived trend. I also want to mention that Macroblank has recently produced an original game soundtrack as well, so he does have talent in music production beyond just sampling.
Barber Beats is a genre tuned for the internet environment. The elevator pitch format encourages interesting titles and eye-catching imagery, but the music itself must also be good enough for the YouTube algorithm to continue spreading the videos. It has produced a large catalogue of suave, downtempo music with a similar sort of appeal to the incredibly popular lo-fi hip hop mixes, as well as some very very cool album covers.
In 1979, Japanese guitarist Masayoshi Takanaka released his first compilation album All Of Me, containing selected songs from some of his early albums such as Seychelles and Brasilian Skies. The album released to moderate success within Japan, as had much of his early music in the 70s and early 80s. Takanaka continued to release music and perform going into the 90s and 2000s, but by that point he was well past his prime, mostly appearing at local jazz festivals and remembered only by aging Japanese jazz fans.
In april 2021, an unafilliated YouTube channel reuploaded All Of Me. In early 2022 this video was recommended to me, by which point it had half a million views. I saw it, I clicked it, and I was introduced to the genre known as Jazz Fusion.
Now, as of May 2026, it's sitting at over 5 million views. The cover art is both exciting and gives a good idea of what the album itself sounds like: Upbeat funky jazz bursting with tropical flavor. The global internet was giving previously small, local artists the same opportunity for viewership as everything else, meaning old music could achieve new success simply by being what people want to hear.
The resurgence of older Japanese music, mainly City Pop (a loose descriptor for Japanese pop and funk from the 70s and 80s), is one of the most well-known music trends among younger people from the past decade. Mariya Takeuchi's Plastic Love, another moderately successful pop single released in 1984, was unexpectedly thrust into the western mainstream after an unafilliated YouTube channel reuploaded it in 2017, reaching an astounding 55 million views by early 2021, at which point it was struck down by a copyright claim. If you were a young person who used YouTube, it's very likely you were recommended this song at some point, no matter what sort of music you usually listen to. More recently, a 2020 reupload of Miki Matsubara's 1979 single "Stay With Me" is now sitting at 136 million views. Near the end of 2020 Stay With Me also jumped to No. 1 on Spotify's daily viral charts.
These songs acted as a gateway to the City Pop genre in general, which was also increasingly associated with Vaporwave due to their similar aesthetics and circumstances. Tatsuro Yamashita, Mariya Takeuchi's husband and a well-known artist in his own right, is one of the most popular musicians among the younger City Pop wave, especially his 1980 album Ride on Time and 1982 album For You. However, people wanting to listen to these albums in the 2020s have been finding it somewhat of a challenge.
Although most of these songs are now over 40 years old, and many have not been popular within Japan for decades, the labels that own them still make an active effort to take down reuploads. And unfortunately, many of these songs and albums still don't have official digital releases (most notably almost everything by Tatsuro Yamashita), turning away potential new fans of these artists. In the late 2010s and early 2020s the City Pop equivalent of Vapor Memory was Xerf Xpec, another archive channel that mass-uploaded Japanese funk, jazz and pop music, bringing a lot of formerly obscure albums to hundreds of thousands of viewers. However, the nature of these albums and their labels meant Xerf was dealing with even more copyright problems than Vapor Memory, leading to many videos being taken down and the eventual deletion of the channel in 2022. A replacement channel has since appeared, "Xearching For Sounds", but it continues to deal with the same issues and the risk of channel deletion.
Both the artists who made this music and the labels who own it have been slow to act in accommodating this newfound international attention. Tatsuro Yamashita has been largely silent on the matter, but he (or more likely whoever's managing his brand) has slowly been uploading some of his music to YouTube and doing new runs of vinyl, albeit still mostly in Japan only. After the reupload of Plastic Love was taken down, a new official music video was eventually uploaded in November 2021, which is now sitting at 73 million views. other jazz bands like Casiopea have recently made their albums available on Spotify, alongside Himiko Kikuchi's Flying Beagle, the popular unofficial reupload of which is luckily still up. This one is also mainly remembered for the cover.
However, Takanaka's reaction to his new wave of fans has definitely been the most interesting. By 2025, multiple of his songs had gone viral on TikTok, and fans were scouring record stores in Japan for used records of his early albums. Takanaka, now 71 years old, hadn't released a studio album in a decade, but he was still frequently doing live performances in Japan. However, these shows were mostly being attended by people his age, and thus the audience response was very mellow. Recognizing his growing international audience, Takanaka decided to perform two shows in Los Angeles, his first appearance outside Japan in decades. The shows immediately sold out, and throughout the performance Takanaka was visibly surprised at how excited and engaged the young audience was in comparison to his usual crowds. He finished by saying "I've been waiting for this day for a long time" and thanking his audience before launching into an electric encore. Having realised the actual scale of his late-career resurgence, Takanaka then performed his first ever world tour in April 2026, with all of those shows also quickly selling out and bringing the same level of thunderous energy. Masayoshi Takanaka is now 73 years old, but he still hopes to perform as long as he can physically continue shredding guitars.
Masayoshi Takanaka is more than just a great musician, he's a vibe. This is a large part of the reason people like him so much. He's always performed with bold brightly-colored guitars, but he didn't create his now iconic surfboard-shaped guitar until 2004. By that point he had already well outlived his expected window of fame, he really just made it because it sounded like a cool idea. He continued to perform and release music in his signature style despite the shifting trends of Japanese music mainly because he enjoyed doing it, and he's always brought energy to his performances regardless of his age. Beyond being an inspiration to young people, Takanaka continues to embody his fun, tropical aesthetic, the aesthetic exuded by his albums and album covers that caught people's attention on the internet in the first place. I doubt he created it with this reason in mind, but many people in their 20s gave Takanaka's music a try because they saw pictures of him with a surfboard guitar.
Our decisions regarding the way we look and the clothes we wear are, broadly, not too different from how they've always been; We want to be accepted socially and thus follow general trends and the things we see other people doing and wearing. These trends also influence what clothes and consumer goods are available to buy in the first place, further pushing us towards specific styles. However, music is different. In the digital age music is cheap, easily accessible, and not something you have to share publicly unless you want to. What we watch and listen to is also very much influenced by current trends, but we also have the freedom to spontaneously give new things a try with little investment required, so long as the algorithm shows them to us in the first place. But we live in an attention economy; In order for something different to grow an audience it has to both be good and interesting at first glance, and strangely this often involves evoking 80s and 90s aesthetics despite the fact that most of the audience is too young to have been around for the original era. To throw in another example, around 2019 I got recommended Peshay Studio Set, a 1996 mix of 90s Ambient Drum n' Bass music paired with a slideshow of early 3D renders by an unaffiliated channel. The video looked strange but it had a lot of views, so I clicked it, and I enjoyed it.
Neither Peshay nor the reuploader could've predicted this video's sudden success. In 2025 Peshay left a comment on the video: "Thank you for all the positive comments. It's crazy how this has taken off after all these years. I see you all and I feel blessed that this music is finding a new audience. 🙏❤" However, this also came after a worrying period of copyright issues in which the video had been claimed, taken down, fought over, and finally brought back.
Commenters in these videos usually refer to them as an 'algorithm pull', usually with some prefix like 'epic' or 'legendary'.
I think there's some appeal in randomly being presented with a "hidden gem" or non-mainstream piece of music that turns out to be really enjoyable. The high view counts, the method of discovery, and often the fact that these are unofficial fan uploads all indicate to listeners that this is simply good music that is succeeding on its own merits, and therefore enjoying it is an indicator of taste. Occasionally this extends further to commenters declaring that the video was recommended to you because you have taste. This sentiment is usually strongest when the music in question is Japanese, or old, or both. I have no problem with this mentality, I enjoy finding new forms of music through these sorts of recommendations but I'm certainly not trying to present myself as superior or "more cultured" because of it. But I have saved the best example for last because demonstrates this mentality very strongly.
In 1976 Japanese Pianist Ryo Fukui released his debut album Scenery, to minor success. He released a few further albums and continued to perform, most often at the "Slowboat" jazz club he owned, until he passed away in 2016. A few months earlier, an unaffiliated channel had reuploaded Scenery to YouTube, which by 2020 was approaching 10 million views. This is around the time I was recommended the video.
As a formerly niche Japanese piano-focused jazz album from the 70s, this ticks basically every box in the "You have taste for listening to this" stereotype list, and many of the top comments convey as such, often specifically mentioning that it was a random recommendation for them.
So, if you want to interesting find new music while you're on YouTube, try out those random recommendations when you see them, even if you end up not liking them there's no harm done. I don't use Spotify the way it's intended to be used, but from the way I see other people use it I can tell it's a whole different ball game. The elevator pitch aspect from the title and the cover art aren't present, you're merely given music that Spotify's own inscrutable algorithm thinks you're likely to enjoy, presumably just things similar to styles you've listened to recently, and if you're not actively looking at the spotify app you have to decide whether you like it just based on the start of the song.
But my music tastes are and always have been guided by the YouTube algorithm, and it seems a lot of others' tastes are too, so I'm clearly not as countercultural as I used to think I am. I see interesting albums, I click them, I enjoy them, I occasionally buy them on vinyl, and that has to mean I have some level of taste, right?