Vaporwave’s sound betrays that it was composed for smartphone and tablet playback

Evidence

Don’t get me wrong, I sincerely think this music deserves attention: it was very interesting when I was in Berlin at the CTM Festival and somebody played some vaporwave stuff over big speakers, and you could just hear that it wasn’t meant to be heard that way. You know, the compression, the sounds… it really seemed music made for smartphones and tablets. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2296

Categorization

• DEFINE: Offers a compact definition-by-example of vaporwave’s aesthetic: MP3-compression music engineered for small-device listening rather than loudspeaker hi-fi.