ChilledCow is the user who had a stream named "Lofi hip hop, music to relax/study to". The channel was undoubtedly the most popular lofi music live stream on youtube, and has been around for a few years at least (pretty sure). The channel just streamed a playlist of lofi music as a pseudo radio station. Nothing nefarious in my opinion, but I speculate the argument could be this user is making youtube ad money playing other people's music (with or without permission from the artist)? But again, it's basically a radio station (really no different from analog FM/AM things).
Really interesting to even see this posted on HN. I was looking for ChilledCow's channel while I was cooking lunch today, couldn't find it, and wasn't sure why.
It's increasingly difficult to have "business" with the big tech. I lived many years anxious with my Google AdSense account. Recently it a was a Facebook Ads account banned without any clear reason, and a 5yr old Pinterest account too.
When the algorithm decides, you are terminated. It just don't matter if you follow all the "TOS" rules.
The electronic music community in general has zero interest in preventing their music from being spread far and wide, with attribution. Remixing another producers work, for example, is just part of the culture. No one gets DCMA'd for it. Quite the opposite. It's encouraged. It's one of the things I love about this community.
Live streams. It’s extremely popular as background sound for Twitch streams and, rather than load the tab an direct the audio into broadcasting software, people put the YouTube link into other services that overlay the music on the stream before broadcast.
Define "legitimate." There are plenty of competitors which could host the channel mentioned in TFA, and many Youtubers also post videos on other social media sites, Twitch, etc.
This is another case where having a large, supportive audience is one of the only ways of getting Google's attention.