Fake AI band scandal: The Velvet Sundown controversy explained
They're blowing up right now, racking up more than a million monthly listeners on Spotify - which is pretty good going for a group that formed less than two months ago.
What's also impressive is that the prolific four-piece psych-rock outfit have already released two albums on their "Verified Artist" profile: 'Floating On Echoes' and 'Dust And Silence', which were dropped on 5 and 20 June respectively.
There are no signs of slowing down, as their new collection of 'cinematic alt-pop and dreamy analogue soul' is out soon, with their third opus titled 'Paper Sun Rebellion' coming out on 14 July.
Vocalist and 'mellotron sorcerer' Gabe Farrow, guitarist Lennie West, 'bassist-synth alchemist' Milo Rains and 'free-spirited percussionist' Orion 'Rio' Del Mar must be thrilled with their sudden rise in popularity.
At least they would be... if they were capable of human emotion.
Yep, The Velvet Sundown don't exist. Not really.
What fresh hell is this?
Questions regarding the band's legitimacy came after Reddit users began searching for background information on the band, after their Discover Weekly playlists had been flooded with The Velvet Sundown songs.
In case you were wondering, they sound... bland. And the insipid lyrical content doesn't help: 'Boots in the mud, sky burning red / Voices of reason lost in our heads / Radio hums while the silence screams / Truth slips away in American dreams.'
Deep.
Doubts persisted when the band created an Instagram account late June – an account which features yellow-tinted images of them looking like eerily airbrushed trustfund kids who didn't want to work for daddy's company and instead decided to become cookiecutter hipsters who pester you at music festivals by insisting that no musical decade will ever top the 70s.
Une publication partagée par The Velvet Sundown (@thevelvetsundownband)
Further suspicions were raised by the band's Spotify 'Verified Artist' bio: "There's something quietly spellbinding about The Velvet Sundown. You don't just listen to them, you drift into them. Their music doesn't shout for your attention; it seeps in slowly, like a scent that suddenly takes you back somewhere you didn't expect.'
If you just felt your spleen drafting a resignation letter because of all your violent cringing, you're only human. Unlike The Velvet Sundown.
Faced with growing criticism, the band defended themselves on their X account Velvet Sundown (The Real Band Not The AI Band): 'Absolutely crazy that so-called 'journalists' keep pushing the lazy, baseless theory that The Velvet Sundown is 'AI-generated' with zero evidence.'
"Not a single one of these 'writers' has reached out, visited a show, or listened beyond the Spotify algorithm."
The band doubled down by writing: 'This is not a joke. This is our music, written in long, sweaty nights in a cramped bungalow in California with real instruments, real minds, and real soul. Every chord, every lyric, every mistake – HUMAN.'
It's worth mentioning that the description attached to their X handle reads: "Just A Bunch of Very Real Dudes In A Totally Real Band Keeping It Extremely Real! No, We Never Use AI!"
The rockers doth protest too much?
Une publication partagée par The Velvet Sundown (@thevelvetsundownband)
Handily, Spotify – which allows AI-generated music and does not require disclosure that the technology has been used - was not responding to any requests for a comment.
Silence for some, debunking for others, as the streaming platform's competitor Deezer wasted no time in flagging the band's album 'Dust And Silence' as being '100% generated by AI.'
Deezer reiterated its commitment to not accepting content generated entirely by AI. It did not say it was against the use of AI as an aid to creation, but issued a press release saying: 'In order to protect artists' remuneration and guarantee an optimal user experience, Deezer currently excludes 100% AI tracks from its algorithmic and editorial recommendations.'
The platform also shared an alarming figure: nearly 20% of music uploaded to their platform has been artificially created.
That number represents a near-doubling in three months. And it's only going to get worse.
Then, the "Extremely Real" jig was up
As the Swedish proverb goes: 'What is hidden in the snow will come forth in the thaw.'
In a new revision to their Spotify bio, The Velvet Sundown came clean and confirmed what had gradually seemed obvious: the band had lied, and their music was, in fact, AI-generated.
'The Velvet Sundown is a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction, and composed, voiced, and visualized with the support of artificial intelligence,' the band bio now reads. 'This isn't a trick — it's a mirror. An ongoing artistic provocation designed to challenge the boundaries of authorship, identity, and the future of music itself in the age of AI.'
The Spotify bio goes on to say: 'All characters, stories, music, voices and lyrics are original creations generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools employed as creative instruments. Any resemblance to actual places, events or persons – living or deceased – is purely coincidental and unintentional.'
It concludes: 'Not quite human. Not quite machine. The Velvet Sundown lives somewhere in between.'
Jokes apparently happen in that somewhere in between space, as the band posted on X: "They said we weren't real. Maybe you're not real either."
Hilarious.
No laughing matter
Une publication partagée par The Velvet Sundown (@thevelvetsundownband)
This 'ongoing artistic provocation' is not as clever as it thinks it is.
It comes during a difficult period in the music industry, where AI-generated music is increasingly polluting listening platforms.
A report published last December in Harper's Magazine alleged Spotify is supplementing playlists with 'ghost artists' to decrease royalty payouts.
These claims were highlighted in Liz Pelly's investigative book 'Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist.'
In her book, published by Hodder & Stoughton, the journalist critically examines Spotify's practices and explains that the platform has no qualms when it comes to slipping music generated by fake AI-generated 'artists' into popular playlists.
A separate study also released last December estimated that without intervention from policymakers, people working in music are likely to lose more than 20 per cent of their income to AI over the next four years.
Conversely, AI developers in the music industry are set to gain €4bn - up from €0.1bn in 2023.
These figures come from the first global economic study examining the impact of AI on human creativity, courtesy of the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC).
Many artists are struggling to find fair remuneration in this new digital ecosystem, and have been speaking out against the existential threat AI poses.
From Nick Cave to Paul McCartney, via Elton John, Radiohead, Dua Lipa, Kate Bush and Robbie Williams – all have called on the UK government to change copyright laws amid the threat of AI.
So far, no luck.
Parting words to the band and its overlords
To The Velvet Sundown – and by extension Spotify - from a 'so-called journalist':
Your aesthetically soulless 'synthetic music project' is a prime example of autocratic tech bros seeking to reduce human creation to algorithms designed to eradicate art.
It highlights the artistically barren desire to generate more money, as well as the hypocrisy of Spotify CEO Daniel Ek - who once said the platform "does not download, create or upload any content, whether generated by artificial intelligence or otherwise."
Provocations are all well and good; but when they're done at a time when artists are expressing real, legitimate concerns over the ubiquity of AI in a tech-dominated world and the use of their content in the training of AI tools, the stunt comes off as tone-deaf. Worse, morally shameless.
None of this means that AI can't be used by those who wish to utilise it as a tool – provided that the use is signaled, thereby allowing listeners to make informed decisions, protect their online information, and lessen their already-prevalent fears of losing control of AI.
Or, to put it a way that The Velvet Sundown would understand: regulatory measures need to be put in place so that "voices of reason AREN'T lost in our heads".
Take people for morons that just consume stuff by minimizing the unquantifiable beauty of human expression, and you'll find yourself justly haemorrhaging subscribers.
The only thing that The Velvet Sundown experiment has achieved, sadly, is disproving the words of 'Don Quixote' writer Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, who wrote: 'Where there's music there can be no evil.'
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