Texture over beat
Soft guitar, an old keyboard, rain or street noise underneath. The lo-fi in rotation is closer to ambient with a pulse than to a beat tape.
All genres
Artists by genre
Lo-fi artistswithout the loop you can hear.
Yes. Lo-fi is one of the most played textures across Calm Study, Creative Flow and Late Shift. What gets a track in is what happens after the first thirty seconds: a loop long enough that the seam never shows, a field recording or a room underneath, and drums quiet enough that the texture leads. What keeps it out is a sample you do not hold the rights to.
Where it lands in the sessions
Session
Calm Study
Rain, room tone and slow keys. The session people leave running through an entire afternoon of reading.
Session
Creative Flow
Warm analog textures with a bit more movement. Made for sketching, first drafts and the messy half of a project.
Session
Late Shift
Darker, steadier and quieter. Built for night work, when the room is silent and the screen is the only light.
What a curator hears as a fit
Long enough to disappear
Five to eight minutes, with something changing slowly across the whole length. Two-minute loops are the most common reason this genre gets refused.
Drums that stay in the back
A dusty kick and a soft snare under the chords, never on top. At desk volume the drums should almost vanish.
Why tracks get turned down
- An audible loop point. If the restart can be heard once, it will be heard forty times in an hour.
- Samples you cannot license. Every track in rotation has to be yours to license, and a lifted record or a vocal snippet from a film is not.
- Track lengths under three minutes with nothing else in the same texture. A curator cannot build a session out of fragments.
Before you send
- Stretch the loop. Vary a chord, a filter or a texture every eight bars so the piece is a slow arc rather than a repeat.
- Play your own parts or use samples you have cleared. Say so in your note; it saves a question later.
- Send at least one longer piece. If everything you have is two minutes, join three into a suite before you apply.
Lo-fi artists in rotation
In rotation
Every track in Lo-fi
3 tracks from emerging artists. Filter by genre to find the texture that fits your working hour.
- Lo-fi textures9.4k5:48
Loose Ends
Yuma Kite
- Lo-fi textures10.7k6:48
Kite Weather
Yuma Kite
- Lo-fi textures6.1k7:26
Third Coffee
Yuma Kite
Common questions
Does Music For Work take lo-fi hip hop?
Yes, if it is instrumental, your samples are yours to license and the drums sit under the texture. Beat tapes with hot drums and uncleared samples are the ones that get refused.
Do I need to clear samples before applying?
You need to hold the rights to license the track. Uncleared samples mean the track cannot go into rotation, so clear them or replace them first.
Which session does lo-fi land in?
Calm Study for the softest, most textural tracks, Creative Flow for a little more movement, Late Shift for the darker, slower ones. Name your guess in the application.
Is a vocal sample allowed?
Only as texture, wordless and low in the mix, and only if you hold the rights. A sung line is a vocal, and the sessions are instrumental.
Send your lo-fi.
Two or three links, a square photo, one line about how you made them. A curator listens end to end and answers within seven days.