Lo-Fi
Lo-fi is music with deliberately rough or imperfect sound quality, and today the word most often means mellow, hazy instrumental hip hop beats used for studying and relaxing.
The term is short for low fidelity and was first applied to home-recorded rock of the 1980s and 1990s, where tape hiss and wobbly sound became part of the appeal. In the 2010s it attached itself to lo-fi hip hop: slow hip hop beats mixed with chill-out elements and deliberately worn touches such as imitation vinyl hiss, spread by round-the-clock YouTube streams and playlists. The producers J Dilla and Nujabes are usually named as the main influences on that sound.
Artists it is known for: R. Stevie Moore, Guided by Voices, Nujabes, J Dilla.
- Family
- Chill & Lo-fi
- On Spotify
- A current genre
- What it is
- A genre
- From
- United States, 1980s
- Also called
- lofi, low fidelity, lo-fi hip hop, chillhop
- Trackify listeners who play it
- 3%
About 2,600 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have lo-fi among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.
Lo-Fi artists
Neutral Milk Hotel
Carissa's Wierd
Pavement
Red House Painters
Dinosaur Jr.
The Microphones
Silver Jews
The Magnetic Fields
Built To Spill
The Mountain Goats
The lo-fi artists most Trackify listeners have in their top fifty. Each opens on Spotify.
Sources
The definition is written for this site from open sources, and was checked against them on 13 November 2026.