My strange YouTube Musical Journey

The YouTube algorithm is the best. At least when it comes to music. And not all the time. But for example, I feel that Spotify plays it too safe. It only shows you a song if it is 90% sure that you're gonna like it. YouTube instead, recommends music like it recommends videos, it just throws random stuff at you to see what sticks.

I haven't tried other music platforms, I don't even know if it works the same on YouTube Music. And I think it's ok to get recommendations based on your recent listening, but maybe I'm not always in the mood for the same genres. I prefer when the algorithm gets really really weird and recommends you an obscure album or mixtape of a genre you've never ever heard about.

Beyond the Lo-Fi

So I've always been mostly into indie rock/pop (or at least since I started using Spotify, but that's another story). I even used to listen to those Birp or Nice Guys 24/7 radio stations back in the Covid era. And it was fine, but it also got me stuck in an algorithm trap where I was listening to super obscure artists that nobody knew. And not in a snob-gatekeeper way, but in a very "literally-no-one-knows-this-artist" way, which was a bit isolating.

Then, somewhere in 2023 I had a bit of a taste collapse and suddenly got sick of all the music that I liked up to that point. And I needed something new to listen to while I worked or studied.

But lofi hip hop beats weren't cutting it anymore.

So I took the next natural step and started listening to the male counterpart.

Back to the Future?

Then, one day I got recommended a video with an awesome cover:

I kinda knew about vaporwave from before. Of course I've heard MACINTOSH PLUS, back in 2014 when it was big on meme culture. I remember the greek statues, the neon colors and the whole 【ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃ】. I always thought it was neat, but never looked too much into it.

Until I found this mixtape and it really got my attention. I'm sure 90% of it was the cover, which is a common trend you will see for the rest of the music featured in this blog post. But also, it was indeed great background music for doing work. Like, it really makes you feel like you're in an office in a retrofuturistic penthouse taken out of an 80s magazine. It has this vibe that manages to keep you interested and engaged but without distracting you.

I feel like it was a natural evolution for me. I love synths and distortion, but I've also grown very tired of the gaming hyper-marketable aesthetic that it's also present on synthwave. This a whole different vibe. It's ethereal and mystical but also feels extremely 80s-corporate, to the point of irony. Kinda like Muzak if it was self conscious. All that mixed with a sense of nostalgia for a better past or a future that never happened. Thanks to this mix, I got a new appreciation for the genre, beyond the memes.

A couple more recommendations are Penthouse in Kyoto and Weather Channel Vaporwave. The first one is from the same user as Employee of the month. The second one has a whole audiovisual presentation. I didn't grow up with the Weather Channel, but it does remind of when I would end up on the last stations of the cable-TV channel list and it was full of all this weird stuff that I didn't understand but made me feel like I was very far away from my cartoons.

To this day, these are my go-to mixes at work afternoons, when I wanna get done the last tasks of the day, but also avoid an anxiety attack.

Musical Caffeine

All of this Vaporwave journey occurred of 2023. But then, next year, I had to do my Professional Internship in order to graduate. And it was horrible. So horrible that I started fantasizing about making this website in order to cope. So horrible that vaporwave wasn't enough.

So once again, one I saw in my recommended page, a video with a very cool cover. (Actually, that’s one of the main characteristics of this genre, the artworks always go super hard) I listened to it, and for a while it was the only thing that was able to get me to actually sit down and work.

Barber Beats can be best described as musical caffeine, like this video says. It’s a very sample-heavy genre, it mostly consists of taking songs of styles like jazz, lounge or trip hop, modifying them a little and mixing them in records under these beautiful cover arts. It’s more of a work of curatorship than one of composition. I'm not an expert on it, but that video I linked before goes into way more detail.

What I know, it’s that it’s great to put on the background. Same as vaporwave, it can keep you engaged but not distracted. Perfect for entering a flow-state. It’s actually considered a subgenre of vaporwave, but instead of 80s overconsumption, it's made to be the soundtrack for a digital barbershop. Like something you would hear on the background of a customization menu in a very slick urban videogame.

I recommend MacroBlank, as that is the first one I discovered. But also modest by default and the pioneer of the genre, Haircuts for Men. I think you should just choose the cover that catches more your attention and go with that.

Amen (break)

It turns out that Vaporwave-Lounge just wasn't enough for that horrible last semester. If Barber Beats is the caffeine of ambient music, then Drum and Bass and Jungle are the cocaine.

The transition was kinda funny. I started getting recommended this series of videos. You can notice the similarities between this and Barber Beats, it has the same influence of lounge, but there’s something different. The drums (and bass?). If the previous mixes helped me to focus, then this one made work on overdrive. It's insane.

I can’t say that I understand the difference between Jungle and DnB . And probably it's just not that important, neither for me nor the people doing these mixes. This is what's called “Intelligent Drum and Bass”, which is basically a subgenre that takes Jungle and Drum and Bass, both genres of club music, and makes them more ambient instead.

There are tons of videos on YouTube compiling and sharing this music, both classics from the 90s and new producers making their own works. Apart from the Ya like Jazz? ones I linked before, there is Selected Works, where I found one of my favorite tracks. But the best video I've found is this mix of songs from a producer that goes by both Artemis and Shogun (the picture above this)

The other music styles I've talked about are all internet born. DnB and Jungle, in contrast, predate the modern internet and come from a irl scene with a rich history. But, as you can notice it is having a resurgence in modern YouTube. This has given rise to a very particular community of both people sharing their experiences and memories from before the web, and people like me, who have just discovered the genre, or are even producing new works inside of it.

Anyways, by the end of my internship my brain was soo toasted, that I had to abandon any and all ambient music. I ended up listening to this amazing playlist of the 200 most iconic hispanic songs of history . On repeat.

AI Contamination

My favorite part of the YouTube Ambient Music Macrogenre, it’s that it feels very human. You know for sure that each mixtape, playlist or album that you listen to has that handmade aspect. A person, very passionate about that particular music, chose each track, put them in a particular order and selected the image or images. All of this dictated by their particular world view and taste.

Sadly, it’s something that's getting more and more rare. Going back to the Spotify example, every time I try to look for playlists, I get pushed all of these “made for you” editorial playlists. And again, all they do is show me the same songs that I already know that I like. What I want is to get my taste challenged by other human beings. By someone who is an expert or an enthusiast in their particular genre. Being participant in that collective intelligence, and also taking part in a community. Reading comments of other human beings, to whom the only connection I have is that YouTube put us in the same taste profile and got us to the same video.

Sadly, this particular community of people that put on random ambient mixes on YouTube while working it's rapidly getting polluted by AI, as is common in all of the internet nowadays. For example, a couple months ago I got recommended this Rat Detective Funk Mix .I thought it was a fun concept album, like the ones that Louie Zong makes. But when I opened the channel, I realized they had uploaded 16 full 1-hour albums with the same concept, in a span of 6 months, all with AI generated pictures as cover art. I can't be 100% confident on this, but I think it's safe to assume that this music was made by a robot.

And I don't hate it just because it’s AI. I hate it because it’s slop. I believe AI can be a great tool to enhance creative work, even if I think we should be aware of the ethical issues it brings with it. There are creators that make a great use of it while still keeping intact their human aspect. But in this case, there just isn’t any reason to listen to this music. It lacks the whole creative process and human expression that I’m looking for and that I've been talking about this whole time

So now we have to be very careful when looking for background music. You have to be conscious wether what you're listening to was actually made by passionate humans with an insatiable need for expression or by a robot with the only objective of farming views, wasting your time and making money out of it.

Other small recommendations

After recovering from the collapse of my mind in mid 2024, I've kept finding more and more videos of different genres. It just has become more of an everyday thing instead of the journey I described in this post. So, to finish it up, I want to quickly shout out some of those genres! I may add more things to this list in the future if I think they're worthwhile.

Italo disco

Italo disco is like the missing link between 70’s disco and 90’s eurobeat. It was a weird moment in Italy and Germany when disco was becoming fully electronic. I especially love this live mix by DJ Subaru. Two of my favorite tracks are: Venha by Zé Carlos (which I can't find anywhere but YouTube!!) and Faces by Clio

Japanese mixes in shops

Live DJ mixes are great. They are the more direct form of the concept I mentioned of real human beings curating music. I found this channel where they take DJs and producers to traditional Japanese settings, like shops and temples, and have them do a session.