Latest news with #TheVelvetSundown
Yahoo
31-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard Have Officially Bailed From Spotify
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard made a bold move over the weekend in regards to their online musical presence, completely removing their entire discography from Spotify. Their sole presence on the platform as of July 29th, 2025 are four songs featured on compilation albums: 'Phantom Island', 'Le Risque', 'The Dripping Tap' and 'Daily Blues'. Their remix of Confidence Man's 'Sicko', from the group's remix album 5am (La La La) from April 2025, also remains on the platform. The psych-rock sextet revealed their decision on Saturday (July 25th), as they shared a new compilation entitled Demos Vol. 7 + Vol. 8 – noting it was available 'everywhere but Spotify'. To make their position exceptionally clear, they followed this up by adding: 'Fuck Spotify.' An Instagram story by the band was then shared, with the background of the story featuring a photo of the controversial and heavily criticised AI-generated band The Velvet Sundown, who have accumulated over 1.3 million monthly listeners on Spotify and released three albums despite not actually existing. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – 'Le Risque' 'A PSA for those unaware: Spotify CEO Daniel Ek invests millions in AI military drone technology,' the band wrote. 'We just removed our music from the platform. Can we put pressure on these Dr. Evil tech bros to do better? Join us on another platform.' King Gizzard are the latest, and arguably the most prominent, act to join an ongoing boycott against the platform over Ek's involvement with Helsing, a company he chairs that develops military drones, surveillance and AI software. Internationally, groups such as Deerhoof and Xiu Xiu have pulled their music from the platform in protest, while locally acts like Dr. Sure's Unusual Practice, Leah Senior and Hugh F. have done the same. 'We need to send a message that this is not OK, and that's going to affect your business,' said Dr. Sure's frontman Dougal Shaw in a statement shared to the band's Instagram account. 'They're taking the fruits of our labour and using it to fund the war machine. We're not going to let your business just tick over. We have very little impact [with] our little boycott, I'm aware of that, but there needs to be solidarity. We need to come together. There needs to be established artists, whose absence will actually be felt, to come on board. Let's collectively draw a line in the sand.' King Gizzard will be touring nationally in December; the full details are available here. Tame Impala Returns With New Single 'End Of Summer' triple j's Hottest 100 Of Australian Songs: The Complete List Baker Boy Announces Long-Awaited New Album 'Djandjay', Shares 'Lightning' The post King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard Have Officially Bailed From Spotify appeared first on Music Feeds. Solve the daily Crossword
Fox News
26-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
Would you ever swap human artists for AI in your playlist
Psychedelic rock band The Velvet Sundown has over a million monthly listeners on Spotify and earns thousands of dollars every month. However, the catch is that it's not a traditional band at all. It's mostly made by artificial intelligence. Their Spotify bio confirms that the group is a synthetic music project, guided by human creative direction but composed, voiced, and visualized using AI. This is a sign of where music may be headed. This revelation has sparked heated debate within the music industry. Some people see it as an exciting new frontier for creativity. Others see it as a threat to everything music has traditionally stood for: originality, emotion, and human expression. Sign up for my FREE CyberGuy ReportGet my best tech tips, urgent security alerts, and exclusive deals delivered straight to your inbox. Plus, you'll get instant access to my Ultimate Scam Survival Guide - free when you join my Platforms like Suno and Udio now allow users to generate original songs with just a few prompts. These tools handle everything, vocals, instruments, structure, with startling sophistication. The Velvet Sundown reportedly earned more than $34,000 in a single month from streaming platforms. And it's not alone. Other acts, such as Aventhis, a "dark country" musician with over 600,000 monthly listeners, are also believed to be powered by AI-generated content. This isn't happening in a studio with a team of producers. It's often just one person inputting text and outputting tracks. The barrier to entry is nearly gone. With a laptop and internet connection, anyone can create and distribute AI-generated songs on a massive scale. Major record labels are pushing back. Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Records have filed lawsuits against AI music platforms, accusing them of using copyrighted material without permission during the training process. At the same time, music creators and advocacy groups are demanding regulation. They want AI-generated tracks to be clearly labeled. They're also calling for updated copyright protections to prevent the misuse of human-created work during AI training. Streaming platforms are starting to acknowledge the issue. Deezer revealed that nearly one in five new uploads are entirely AI-generated. This trend is growing and reshaping the very idea of what it means to be a musician today. For emerging musicians, the rise of AI is deeply frustrating. Tilly Louise, an alternative pop artist based in the UK, has amassed millions of streams but still works a full-time job because her music doesn't generate enough income. Watching an AI-generated band pull in massive streaming numbers feels like being pushed aside by something that isn't even real. She's not alone in this sentiment. Many artists feel overwhelmed by an industry that increasingly rewards volume and virality over authenticity and hard work. Some critics warn that AI-generated art dilutes genuine human expression, believing it floods the internet with hollow content, making it harder for listeners to form a genuine connection through music. Not everyone sees AI as the enemy. Grammy-winning producer Timbaland recently launched a venture called Stage Zero, which plans to spotlight AI-generated pop stars. Music schools are also adapting. Educators are now teaching students how to utilize AI tools to enhance their creative process, rather than avoiding them. Still, even those who are optimistic about the technology admit that it could completely upend the music business. As AI-generated content becomes increasingly easy to produce, the competition for listener attention and streaming dollars will intensify. Nobody knows exactly what the future will look like, but the direction is clear: AI is no longer on the fringes. It's already in the mainstream. AI is no longer just supporting music creation; it is actively creating music that listeners are streaming and enjoying. Whether it's rock, country, or pop, AI-generated songs are showing up in more playlists every day. The real question is not whether AI music is good enough. It's whether listeners will care that it wasn't made by a human. As technology improves and the lines between human and machine blur, that question will only get harder to answer. Does it matter who made the music, as long as it sounds good? Let us know by writing us at Sign up for my FREE CyberGuy ReportGet my best tech tips, urgent security alerts, and exclusive deals delivered straight to your inbox. Plus, you'll get instant access to my Ultimate Scam Survival Guide - free when you join my Copyright 2025 All rights reserved.
South China Morning Post
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
What does AI band The Velvet Sundown's rise mean for the future of music?
While few expect The Velvet Sundown to start picking up Grammy awards in the near future with its bland indie ballads, there are some who are beginning to wonder. Advertisement In the space of just six weeks, the band has pumped out three albums containing 13 songs each and had close to 1.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify as of July 22. But The Velvet Sundown – or rather, its makers – do not hide behind the fact that it has been relying on artificial intelligence to do so. 'Not quite human. Not quite machine. The Velvet Sundown lives somewhere in between,' it says on the band's social media accounts and its Spotify site. It is said to be a band of four, but the members have not been seen in public so far. Images of the group have evidently been created by AI. Advertisement Music by The Velvet Sundown started making the rounds across streaming platforms in early June. Combining rock, country and folk elements, most of the songs are interchangeable, mellow and tame – as long as you ignore lines like 'March for peace, not for pride' in the group's most played song, 'Dust on the Wind'.
News.com.au
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
The Velvet Sundown: Inside the bizarre truth about popular band
Dust on the wind, boots on the ground. Smoke in the sky, no peace found Rivers run red, the drums roll slow. Tell me brother, where do we go? These are the lyrics that open Dust On the Wind, the first track from The Velvet Sundown's debut album, Floating on Echoes. It landed on Spotify on June 5, a melancholic ballad about the bloody futility of war set to a twangy guitar riff. Stylised images of the band showed singer Gabe Farrow, guitarist Lennie West, keyboardist Milo Rains, and drummer Orion 'Rio' Del Mar, who looked like the bastard love children of a Crosby, Stills and Nash tribute act dressed exclusively in Mumford and Sons' cast offs. Dust was soon appearing on Spotify playlists with hundreds of thousands of saves. In total, Floating has been streamed nearly five million times. Then something very weird happened. On June 20 the Velvet boys put out a second album, Dust And Silence. It was all an unthinkably fast turnaround even for a band who can go vanilla-ishly against stereotype, has never seen the wrong end of a whiskey bottle or been plagued by toxic Liam/Noel juju. Then came a third and a fourth album. Their secret: The Velvet Sundown are AI-generated. Their music, promo shots and backstory were created by AI, The Guardian reported this week. No one has copped to being the brains behind this all and once Velvet's unrealness started making headlines, 'they' changed 'their' bio to read, 'Not quite human. Not quite machine.' Whether listeners twigged or not, between June 29 and July 1, Dust on the Wind topped Spotify's daily Viral 50 chart in Britain, Norway and Sweden. Who knew the rise of our digital overlords would be quite so catchy? The Terminator never spun a decent tune now did he? The bottom line: Hollywood and the music industry in particular are being run over by a truck driven by the creepily happy Gab, Lennie, Milo and Rio. We have had months, years of Chicken Little-style sky-is-falling, doom-saying, and end-is-nighing about AI but now a terrifying amount is happening terrifyingly fast. In January a podcast featuring legendary British broadcaster Michael Parkinson was launched, the debut episode seeing him speak to Jason Derulo. Unremarkable except for the fact that Parkinson died in 2023. To create the show, his son and a production company trained an AI 'Parky' by feeding it the 2,000 real interviews he had done over his career. In June, Vin Diesel announced the final installment in the Fast & Furious franchise - and promised to bring back Paul Walker's character. Walker, of course, was killed in a car accident in 2013. Since 2023 the CAA talent agency, which represents stars like Beyoncé and George Clooney , has been quietly working to'capture the likeness of all its clients so it could own and control the rights to their image,' for possible future AI use, New York magazine recently revealed. AI could also see the rise of 'fan episodes'. Diehards of a particular show won't have to restrict themselves to writing exhaustively long, panty fan-fic but will one day be able to to 'create their own episodes', according to veteran TV producer and Thursday Murder Club author Richard Osman. Speaking on his brilliant Rest is Entertainment podcast with co-host Marina Hyde, he argued that in the future actors and creators will not just sign up for projects but will sign 'a contract that allows an AI use of their image' within the 'gated wall' of a particular project or series. This will mean that fans will be able to 'constantly remix their favourite television programs' and 'create their own episodes' of hit shows. (How many prompts are going to read 'Now kiss'?) In Hollywood alone there are now nearly 100 AI studios. 'Everyone's using it,' a CAA agent told New York magazine. 'They just don't talk about it.' The race is now on for the first fully AI series or movie. Staircase studio took the lead in March when it released the first five minutes of what will be the feature-length The Woman With Red Hair, which will tell the true story of Dutch resistance fighter Johanna 'Hannie'. Helmed by a Divergent series producer, the Woman taster is an eerie watch. While some moments are obviously unreal, other shots, especially of streetscapes and sweeping city views, are spookily believable. Fashion is not immune here. In March H&M released suitably artsy black and white shots of model Mathilda Gvarliani doing some pouting in a white tank. Only one of them was the real Gvarliani. This was part of the global fashion giant's project to create 30 digital 'twins' of actual models, which in turn they will use to create AI-generated images for marketing campaigns and social media. (The models will retain the rights to their digital replicas and the retailer said the AI images would be marked as such.) Delve into how far and fast AI is reaching and it is breathtaking in every sense of the word. What The Velvet Sundown saga makes clear is that we might not quite have gotten to the other side of the uncanny valley but we are in the midst of a Gutenberg-like watershed moment for creative industries. Very very soon, no camera shot will be impossible, no location out of reach, no pose unachievable, no sound uncreatable, no deadness of star insurmountable. On one hand, this means the barriers for entry into the famously hard-to-break-into entertainment biz have just fallen. 19-years-old and have a brilliant film idea? Go forth and create. On another, is anyone checking that the code doesn't careen off into the never never with no reasonable guard rails in place? There is another 'but' in all of this too. (I like big 'buts' and I cannot lie.) Just because you can make it and use it doesn't mean people will eagerly take it up. Already, in some instances, the giddy adoption of AI is being met with a swift backlash. On YouTube, The Woman With Red Hair taster has twice as many downvotes as upvotes. In June, MrBeast, the world's biggest YouTuber with more than 385 million subscribers, announced he was launching an AI thumbnail generator, which would allow users to mimic aspects of existing video art. Such was the vehemence of reaction, he was forced to kill it a week later. This month Spotify appeared to be cracking down on The Velvet Sundown, removing their fourth album and several uploads. Hours before I was set to file this story, the 'band' threw a spanner in the works. 'They' took to X, formerly Twitter, posting an ostensibly behind-the-scenes video and writing, 'Everyone who said we're 'not real' and asked for 'video proof' can now see for themselves! WE ARE 100 REAL!'. In the clip, the 'boys' say things like 'The song came to me after I fasted for three days in Joshua Tree with nothing but a deck of tarot cards' and 'I was trying to remember what stars sound like'. Muddling things even further, a cameo from what appears to be The Eagles' Tim Schmit. It's clearly not real-real per se but someone has to have laboured over a keyboard to conjure Gab, Lennie, Milo and Rio. Is it all an elaborate prank? A majors thesis in pixel form? A very bored 12-year-old's Frankenstein creation? As a TV show once taught us, the truth is out there.
CNBC
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- CNBC
AI-generated music is going viral. Should the music industry be worried?
With more than 1 million monthly listeners on Spotify, psychedelic rock band The Velvet Sundown is raking in thousands of dollars and has the music industry asking itself tough questions 一 and they're not about whether the '70s are coming back. The "band" was recently confirmed to primarily be the work of generative artificial intelligence 一 something that had been heavily suspected in light of a suspiciously smooth and glossy image of its "band members" and derivative song titles like "Dust on the Wind." The Velvet Sundown's bio on Spotify now clarifies that it is a "synthetic music project guided by human creative direction, and composed, voiced, and visualized with the support of artificial intelligence." It adds, "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." However, in CNBC's conversations with various music professionals, descriptors like "soulless," "stifling," and "creepy" surfaced, as the industry grapples with the encroachment of AI. While AI tools have long been integrated into music software like Logic, newer AI-powered platforms such as Suno and Udio have made it easier than ever to generate entire songs based on nothing more than a few prompts and inputs. As a result, "The Velvet Sundown" is far from the only AI-generated artist emerging online. There's evidence that other upstarts like "dark country" musician Aventhis — with more than 600,000 monthly listeners on Spotify — are also a product of AI-generated voices and instruments. Meanwhile, France-headquartered music-streaming service Deezer, which deployed an AI detection tool for music in January, revealed in April that about 18% of all tracks now being uploaded to its platform are fully generated by AI. The quality and originality of AI music have often been criticized, but experts say that as generative AI becomes more sophisticated, it's becoming harder and harder for the average listener to distinguish between human and machine. "[The Velvet Sundown]" is much better music than most of what we've heard from AI in the past," Jason Palamara, an assistant professor of music technology at the Herron School of Art and Design, told CNBC. "Early versions could be used to make catchy, repetitive hooks ... But we've gotten to the point where AI is putting out songs that actually make sense structurally, with verses, choruses and bridges," Palamara said. He said The Velvet Sundown is likely just the "tip of the iceberg" of what's coming. Suno and Udio — the current "gold standard" of genAI platforms — come with few to no barriers to entry, allowing anyone to create hundreds of AI tracks in one sitting. Both AI platforms offer free access, as well as premium subscriptions priced at about $30 or less a month. But while creating an AI song can be done for free, that doesn't mean it can't generate revenue. The Velvet Sundown has made about $34,235 over a 30-day period across all audio streaming platforms, according to estimations from ChartMasters' streaming royalties calculator. Because of that, it's easy to see why AI creators might want to flood streaming platforms with as much generated music as possible, hoping to go viral. The growing prevalence of AI music has caused a stir across the music industry, according to Keith Mullin, head of management and music industry course leader at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. "It's the hot topic of the moment, especially in relation to copyright and digital service providers like Spotify," said Mullin, who is also the guitarist for Liverpool rock band The Farm. Major record labels such as Sony Music, Universal Music Group, and Warner Records have launched lawsuits against Suno and Udio, accusing them of mass copyright infringement. Meanwhile, thousands of musicians and creatives have called for a prohibition on using human art to train artificial intelligence without permission. Nevertheless, Mullin said generative AI on music is here to stay. "I don't think we can turn the clock back," he said, noting that music and its business models are ever changing. Indeed, the music business is no stranger to big technology shifts — events like the introduction of Napster in 1999 and the proliferation of music-streaming platforms in the 2000s shook up the industry, forcing major adaptations. Still, the notion of competing with AI bands is causing anxiety for budding musicians like Tilly Louise, a U.K.-based alternative pop artist who said it's already hard enough for small performers to gain traction and generate income from online music. Despite accumulating millions of streams on Spotify, Louise, 25, said she's never made nearly enough money from streaming platforms to live on, and currently works a full-time job. "For a band that doesn't even really exist to then get all that social media traction, it's so discouraging," she added. To prepare young artists for the changing music environment, music professors said, they've increasingly been working AI into their lesson plans, aiming to teach students how to use the technology to enhance their creative process and music production, rather than replace it. Some established producers have also leaned into the trend. Last month, Grammy-winning artist and producer Timbaland launched an AI-focused entertainment venture, called Stage Zero, which will feature an AI-generated pop star. "Other producers are going to start doing this ... and it will create a completely different model of the music industry that we can't predict yet," Palamara said. He added, however, that he does think the trend will make earning money as an artist online even harder. The trend is also expected to continue to receive backlash not only for its impact on artists, but also for what it could mean for music consumers. "[M]usic fans should be worried because the proliferation of AI music and content clogs our social media feeds and algorithms, making it difficult for us to connect with one another," Anthony Fantano, a prominent music critic and internet personality on YouTube, told CNBC in a statement. "AI art offers nothing that humans themselves can't already do better," he said, adding that it's a way for "greedy capitalists" to cut out actual artists. Aside from calling for better copyright protections for artists when it comes to the training of AI, music groups are asking that AI-generated music be labeled as such. Spotify did not respond to an inquiry from CNBC regarding its generative AI detection and labeling policies. In a statement to CNBC, Tino Gagliardi, president of the American Federation Of Musicians of the United States and Canada, urged creators, those in the tech industry, lawmakers, and music fans to stand together in support of human creativity and authorship. "Consent, credit, and compensation are prerequisites in AI development. And transparency, including in streaming and other marketplaces, is the foundation for safeguarding musicians' livelihoods. Anything short of that is theft."
