Spotify AI band controversy — who is The Velvet Sundown and are they real?

Tom's Guide

3 days ago

Looks like there's a new band in town that's taking the world by Storm. They're called "The Velvet Sundown," they're a four-piece psychedelic rock act from "a sweaty garage in California," and they sound a little bit like a mixture between Pink Floyd, Tame Impala, and King Gizzard and Lizard Wizard on their least weird day.
They're also, potentially, not real.
Despite having over 400,000 monthly listeners at the time of writing, there are a bunch of different hallmarks that could well point out that "The Velvet Sundown" are AI-generated. So what on earth is going on?
NME dug deep into the new act to try and work out where they came from. The act seems to have come effectively out of nowhere, a seeming mystery that has cropped up on Spotify with no fanfare, no marketing, no socials, and a bunch of what look like AI-generated images.
Head over to the band's X account and you'll see something similar, and something interesting. There are similarly AI-alike images of distorted guitars (not the fun kind — think twisted frets and bizarre neck lengths), fingers that merge with burgers, and otherworldly stares.
Despite the images, the account looks to assure the world that they are, indeed, real people. They're apparently going to send free tickets to their next tour to their "Twitter" followers, and that "the truth is coming... stay tuned." It's all very weird, and slightly confusing.
Good Question! Read their Spotify bio and you'll learn that the band consists of "singer and mellotron player Gabe Farrow," guitarist Lennie West, Milo Raines, who apparently "crafts the band's textured synth sounds," and percussionist Orion "Rio" Del Mar, who is apparently "free spirited." Ok then. People. Band members.
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Do any amount of searching online, however, and you won't find any social media accounts to match the names. Apparently, it's because they've had to close their accounts due to all the AI questions they've been receiving, even though no one has reached out to them for comment. At least, so the band complains.
Somehow, the band has two albums out already, even though they've not been around for very long. Both share very similar covers, both were released in June 2025, and both feature identical track counts and run times within a minute of each other. Apparently, they're a very prolific group too, given there's a new album on the way on July 11th.
It's all very, very strange, and it suggests that the band might be AI-generated.
While they were initially discovered on Spotify, I've found the band is also found on Apple Music, Tidal, Qobuz, and Deezer. I've reached out to every single service to try and find out more, and so far, only Deezer has sent a response. While there's nothing about "The Velvet Sundown" as yet, the platform has put an AI-generated tag on the artist page, and tells me:
'We've detected a significant uptick in delivery of AI-generated music only in the past few months, and we see no sign of it slowing down." says Deezer CEO, Alexis Lanternier. "It's an industry-wide issue," He continues, "and we are committed to leading the way in increasing transparency by helping music fans identify which albums include AI music'.
"Most of the daily delivery of AI tracks are never streamed on Deezer, but they are diluting the catalog and are used for fraudulent activity," says Qobuz. "Today up to 70% of all streams of fully AI-generated tracks are fraudulent." That raises a really interesting point when it comes to AI-generated music in general.
I'll update the article when I hear back from more services as well.
Recently, Spotify completely cut revenue for any band that falls below 1000 monthly streams, making it harder than ever for small bands to make any kind of money on streaming. I spoke to a small band, SorryPark, who've put in all the hard graft you'd expect for a band that wants to be seen on Spotify.
"We've had 553 unique listeners over the last 28 Days," bassist Halil tells me. This can "fluctuate between 400-800," he continues, "but with good playlisting around new releases, we can get 4 figures."
This is a band that has played "close to 100" live shows, come close to winning battle of the bands competitions, and filled out smaller local venues. They've appeared at Festivals, supported much larger acts, and released singles and an album.
They're active on social media, with TikTok, Instagram and Facebook accounts. The band is putting in the work, but they're not able to garner the same impressive listening numbers as an act that's appeared out of nowhere.
How much money have they made from Spotify streaming? Not "enough to write home about, unfortunately." They cover all their recording costs themselves, including a small private studio and producer for their full-length album.
So I ask Halil about AI music, and how he can see it affecting the band and its chances. "I can't speak for the rest of the band, but it's so demoralizing seeing a free and humanless track getting tens or hundreds of thousands of streams," he tells me, "something we could only dream of."
"We're back in the studio next week," he continues, "to sit down and record two new singles. The amount of effort that goes into our music is incredible, and that's before we've taken time off to travel to the studio."
How do we support bands like this? "Come to gigs, buy merch! But also stream our music, share our socials. Just make more people aware of us." And that's one thing you'll never be able to do with AI music — go and see it live.
There will be a very real person (or people) behind "The Velvet Sundown." An AI model can't (yet) make this all unprompted for itself, as you might imagine. Yet there are lots of questions to be asked about AI music on streaming apps beyond the latest band on the block.
AI music isn't a new problem. We've all seen adverts on Instagram for playlists of "Fantasy Music to Help You Sleep" that are 10s of hours long, and filled with eerily similar tracks that would almost fit into The Lord of the Rings soundtrack. Deezer knows it's a problem, and has made efforts to make the problem as obvious as possible.
But it's not something that's likely to go away, much to the chagrin of small acts like SorryPark. AI music takes algorithmic presence away from smaller acts, while garnering massive numbers of monthly listeners that could generate as much as $2,000 per month.
"The Velvet Sundown" doesn't seem to have had any marketing, but, by covering them like this, they're getting it for free. By highlighting the issue, are we making it worse? I'd like to hope we're doing the opposite, but I suspect the truth is something more uncomfortable.
So. If you care about the music you listen to, it's more important than ever to go to those live shows and buy merch. Or, if you don't care, go ahead and listen to "The Velvet Sundown" — it might be the future of music streaming.