What is Chillhop Music?

Since its inception in 2013, Chillhop Music has amassed more than 3 million YouTube subscribers, hypnotizing wired college students and soundtracking dinner party conversations with its 24/7 livestream of the most chill hip-hop imaginable. Chillhop founder and CEO Bas van Leeuwen and Head of Marketing Theo Egginton joined our latest Happy Hour to discuss how Chillhop went from one man scouring the internet for tracks to post to his personal blog to a thriving record label signing top artists in the genre it gave birth to. Tune in to hear about the origins of the Chillhop label, the surprisingly varied audience who love Chillhop music, and the controversy around the internet confusing the genre with the name of its top label.

 

Happy Hour Guests

• Bas van Leeuwen — Bas is the Founder and CEO of Chillhop Music, a leading platform for chill instrumental hip-hop music based in Rotterdam. He started his YouTube Channel in January 2013 and it now has more than 3 million subscribers on the platform. The Chillhop team consists of over 20 people worldwide, from A&R to Art Direction to Web Development, and continues to expand with publishing, a new clothing line, and a Rotterdam cafe now part of the fold. 
• Theo Egginton — Theo is the Head of Marketing at Chillhop Music. Originally from the U.K., he oversees marketing development and operations alongside strategic partnerships for Chillhop Music and its various sub-brands.

The interview was conducted by Songtradr CXO, Victoria Wiltshire.

 

The origins of the Chillhop label.

We started the conversation with the question on everyone’s mind; how did Chillhop begin? Bas, joking that it would take an hour to tell the whole story, quickly explained that he started Chillhop as a music blog right around the time he finished his studies. However, he quickly realized he wasn’t a writer but rather a curator. Hence, a YouTube channel was born. This allowed Bas to share the music he loved and interact with the creators. Before long, he had a flourishing business on his hands.

“It started as a blog, then I figured that it doesn’t make sense to write about music,” said Bas. “So I started a YouTube channel where I just found music, shared it with others, and talked to the artists to get to know them.”

By the time Bas started the label, the YouTube channel had 100,000 subscribers. This provided a baseline to launch from, almost guaranteeing the label would begin on the right foot. Today that number 3M. And the label’s footprint reaches even further, now incorporating a publishing division, label services, and a clothing line.

“It started originally as a promo channel. Then in 2016, I started a label to get more involved in the creative process and help the music get heard. From there, we also grew a publishing division. So, let’s call it a music platform, but we’re very multifaceted. It started as a promo channel, we started a label after it, and we’re just doing a lot of things at the moment. But at the core, we’re a music label.”

Theo was welcomed into the fold a year ago and credited Bas and a small core of diehard Chillhoppers for organically growing the channel. “When I came on board, it was already flying,” he noted enthusiastically. However, moving the needle forward is still essential, and Theo explained that Bas steers the ship brilliantly with an eye always on how to best market the music and serve Chillhop’s massive audience. 

“We’re lucky to have a CEO who I would describe as a natural marketer. He thinks about it way more than any owner I’ve worked with before,” said Theo. “I think it’s both a blessing and a curse because I know that everything I do, Bas is going to have a very astute opinion on it.”

Describing his role as Head of Marketing, Theo explained that “a lot of it’s about understanding the team and where the holes are, and trying to plug those holes and stay true to what the audience wants and values.”

The most significant debate surrounding Chillhop is whether it’s a genre or a label. And there’s no one better to answer that sometimes thorny question than the team who started both. So we had to ask, is Chillhop a genre or a label? 

“I think it’s always a futile discussion,” explained Bas. “One person says A, one person says B, but in the end, it’s just music.”  

“I never started Chillhop with the intention of it becoming a genre. I was literally just with a friend and said, let’s do something more for this music; what would you call it? Let’s see if Chillhop dot com is available, and it was. So it was kind of serendipitous in a way.”

 

The secret to Chillhop’s enduring success.

It is one thing to appreciate a style of music, but building a successful brand on the back of it requires an equally invested fanbase. So we asked Theo to describe Chillhop’s primary audience and what draws them back time after time.

“I think it’s an ever-changing presence,” stated Theo. “But overall, we see that it’s people that need to relax, focus, or seek escapism.”

“There is this Portuguese word ‘Saudade.’’ It means a deep emotional state of nostalgic and profound melancholic longing for something or someone that you care for (there’s no English translation). So when I actually look across the audience and speak to them or read what they put to us, it all very much comes back to one thing: the emotional state that this style of music puts you in. So I think that’s how we find them.” 

“College students are using it to study, but as we learn more about this audience, we see there’s a lot of teachers using it in the classroom, and a lot of young professionals using it in all kinds of ways. Then there’s the endless trope that we hear; that you can literally put this style to any situation in your life, and it will enhance it somehow. I firmly do believe that, and it’s a big part of what we do.”

“It eliminates the awkwardness at a dinner party if you have it instead of silence. But on top of that, you can really just shut the world out and be on your own for a while. So it goes well with almost everything. We’ve actually seen a massive spike in extreme sports enthusiasts using Chillhop music, so I’m never surprised anymore when I see a new demographic come into play.” 

Extreme sports enthusiasts do seem like an odd fit, but Theo has a theory that sounds perfectly normal.

“When you’re thinking about the types of groups that you might want to target, you’re not thinking, sports. No way! But then you think about everything they do outside of the activity itself; sports professionals, they have a lot of recovery time and a lot of time where they need to relax, and I think that’s very easy to miss.” 

 

How to stay relevant in the ever-changing music world.

Turning their attention to the music industry at large, we asked Bas and Theo what they see as some of the toughest challenges ahead. Bas began by mentioning the fast pace at which trends come and go. “You can be in a playlist one day and have a lot of listeners, then the next day you’re out of the playlist, and you don’t have listeners anymore,” he noted.

“Traditionally an artist’s brand was something that built up slowly but surely. But now that there is more focus on short-term placements, artists aren’t building as much of a brand for themselves.”

“This is something we see as a challenge for ourselves as well,” Bas added. 

“How do you set yourself up for the long term within such a fast-changing environment? I think the biggest challenge is staying relevant and being able to adapt.”

Theo added that trying to control your brand outside of your sphere of influence is really difficult. “Platforms that we operate on often give you very limited ability to customize what you’re doing,” he said. 

He then returned to Bas’ point that the pace with which things move presents numerable challenges for the music industry. “Spotify just changed recently, and it changed how we look at things,” he said. “You reach almost like a paradox, where there are so many platforms and things changing within those platforms. You can adapt to them as quickly as you can, but are you really performing your core purpose, which is providing value for the user? I think that’s a really difficult thing,” Theo explained.

“If we are going to commit to a platform, it has to be right,” added Theo. “Taking time to learn it and adapt is important to us. We’re quite a modest team for the scope of what we’re doing, and there is only so much time we can spend on it. So it’s about getting that balance and making sure we commit to the platforms that we feel our audience is most engaged on.”

 

Your Chillhop questions answered.

We conclude each Happy Hour by asking questions from our social media community. So, if you don’t already follow us, hop on over to our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn pages and hit that subscribe button.

What are some artists you think made Chillhop what it is?

It took Bas no time to answer this one. “J Dilla, Nujabes, and a lot of the jazz artists being sampled in this music. There are a lot of artists to name,” he said.

“When I discovered the music, there were a lot of Japanese artists that I listened to. A lot of American artists are paving the way for this type of music as well. So yeah, it’s a lot of artists to name, but I think those two for me are the main ones that signify the nature of the sound.”

“I think there’s some that are local to us,” included Theo. “Musically speaking, people like Psalm Trees, Philanthrope, and Sleepy Fish.”

“When Bas talks about where the sound came from, I think, with my sphere, or my love of the genre, they’re artists that took that kind of organic, original thing and pushed it into new directions embracing other sounds. When you listen to Sleepy Fish, in particular, there is a whole other thing going on with the more pop-style melodies. And I think what Psalm Trees and Philanthrope are doing is pretty crazy too.”

“The nice thing is you’ve got the jazzy side, and you’ve got the more like, added ambient influence or positive, major music side. Once you start to learn more about the genre, it starts to break out into its subsections.”

How do I submit music to Chillhop?

“It’s been so hard to accept submissions because if we open submissions we get 500. There is a chance there’s a good track in there, but there’s a chance there isn’t,” answered Bas. “We’re working on a way to have open submissions, or at least have a chance for people to get involved in Chillhop. So keep your eyes on the platform.”

What is the process for finding artists you think will really fit Chillhop?

“It’s always been things like SoundCloud, us just finding stuff online, or getting introduced to things by other artists. So there’s a circle there, but I really want to work on breaking out of that circle and find talent in places you wouldn’t normally look,” said Bas.

“We’re also taking steps to connect locally and find more local talent. That’s something – because we’re such an international label – that we haven’t done much.”

Why do so many content creators love Chillhop music?

“I think they love it because it’s easy to fit in anywhere. It doesn’t overtake the mood,” explained Bas. “It’s a nice soundtrack to pretty much anything.”

“It’s hard when you’re trying to put music to stuff that you’ve created not to alter the original feeling you wanted to give off with that visual. So I think Chillhop doesn’t really change anything. It just accentuates it,” added Theo. 

“Within the style, you’ll always find something that seems to fit perfectly.”

 

Fans can catch the full Songtradr Happy Hour on YouTube.

 

Watch the full panel discussion:

 

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