Latest news with #VelvetSundown
Hindustan Times
24 minutes ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
You've been listening to an AI band on Spotify without even realising it
It was probably only a matter of time before an AI-generated band picked up a big following on Spotify. The Velvet Sundown, a supposed indie rock group, now claims more than half a million monthly listeners, but look a little closer and things start to feel off. Their band photos are clearly AI-made, their bio is full of odd phrases, and there's no sign any of the members actually exist. Even their name feels like it was stitched together by a computer, borrowing from classic bands to sound familiar. What's really going on is less about music and more about technology. The Velvet Sundown's songs have landed on some popular playlists, like 'Vietnam War Music' and 'Good Mornings', which are followed by hundreds of thousands of users. Most listeners probably never searched for the band, the songs just played while people were after a bit of background music. It's a reminder that streaming numbers can be misleading, especially when algorithms and playlists are doing the heavy lifting. Is AI music the future? Spotify's system doesn't really care if a band is real or not. As long as a track fits the vibe of a playlist, it can rack up streams, and those monthly listener stats can climb quickly. The platform's 'Discovery' mode makes things even easier for unknown acts, letting them trade a slice of their royalties for more exposure in the algorithm. It's a set-up that makes it simple for AI-generated music to blend in with tracks from real artists, and for streaming metrics to look more impressive than they really are. The band's social media accounts have tried to push back against the AI rumours. 'This is not a joke,' the band's apparent X account wrote. 'This is our music, written in long, sweaty nights in a cramped bungalow in California with real instruments, real minds, and real soul.' They doubled down, insisting, 'Every chord, every lyric, every mistake — HUMAN.' In a follow-up, they added, 'Just because we don't do TikTok dances or livestream our process doesn't mean we're fake. The fact that some blog editors would rather pretend we're a bunch of machines than admit an unknown band is out here grinding & made something people enjoy is insulting.' But the evidence says otherwise. Their images, their online presence, even their lyrics and vocals, all have that too-perfect, generic feel that comes from machine learning tools. It's hard to shake the sense that the whole project is less about artistry and more about testing how far AI can go in gaming the system. For musicians, this is a tough pill to swallow. Real bands spend years building a following, playing gigs, and writing songs that mean something to them. Now, a few clicks and some clever playlist placements can give an AI act the appearance of success, even if no one actually knows or cares who they are. The Velvet Sundown story is a sign of where things are heading. As AI gets better at making music, and as streaming platforms keep focusing on numbers over substance, it's only going to get harder to tell what's real and what's not. For listeners, it means more background music that sounds just right but doesn't really say anything. For artists, it's another reminder that in the streaming age, popularity can be manufactured, but meaning still comes from the human touch. First Published Date: 02 Jul, 16:54 IST
The National
6 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The National
AI-generated band Velvet Sundown is a Spotify hit, but is the music any good?
In normal times, Velvet Sundown would be a good news story. They released two full-length albums only weeks apart, amassing more than half a million monthly Spotify listeners, all while their tracks landed on popular mood-based playlists. At a time when few new rock bands are breaking through, their arrival stands out. There's only one complication – the band isn't real. At least, not in the traditional sense. There are no verified photos of all four members, no live shows, no interviews and no clear production credits. Everything, from the album art to the band bio, points to Velvet Sundown being fully AI-generated. But the point of this review isn't to play detective and spot the musical equivalent of the em dash. It's to ask, even if this music was made by machines, is it actually any good? Floating on Echoes and Dust and Silence feel less like distinct records and more like two sides of the same coin. At its algorithmic heart, Velvet Sundown is more a stylistic experiment than a creative expression. They evoke the warm, washed-out tones of 1970s Laurel Canyon folk – a hazy Americana sound informed by soft guitars, genteel percussion and warm ambience. The references are convincing. But as a listening experience, it wears thin fast. Take Dust on the Wind, currently the band's most-streamed track. It's laid-back, mellow and competently arranged. The bassline rolls along gently, the percussion shuffles lightly behind the guitars and the whole thing lands exactly where it should. While the song has a definite vibe, it's not enough if that's all there is. Drift Beyond the Flame and The Wind Still Knows Our Name follow similar patterns, and after a while, that samey-ness starts to set in. And after 20 songs of this, the question stops being about whether they are real and more about why they don't make me feel anything? Part of the answer lies in the vocals. The singer (credited as Gabe Farrow) – or rather the simulated voice – is programmed to sound like a restrained crooner, somewhere between a diet Chris Cornell and Jeff Buckley, but without the risk. Every note falls exactly where it should, like Tetris blocks. Just when a vocal line is begging to be lifted or break slightly, it stops flat as if the air's been cut. You don't hear breath intake, strain or any of the human cracks that gives a performance its vulnerability. The voice never truly soars, and maybe, for now, it can't. The music across both albums, all 26 songs in total, carries the same uniform restraint. The titles suggest emotional weight – End the Pain, Smoke and Silence and Drift Beyond the Flame – but the lyrics rarely move beyond generalities. While criticising an album for vague writing can feel like low-hanging fruit, it's harder to ignore when the genres referenced are built on a tradition of evocative lyrics that are often direct, searing or emotionally grounded. End the Pain promises catharsis but never builds towards anything. Smoke and Silence is filled with empty slogans (raise your voice, break the chain / Sing for peace, end the pain) and Dust on the Wind, with its soft tone and strongest melody, drifts through pastoral scenes without direction. Even in folk or Americana, genres often known for their ambience and intimacy, there's usually a sense of movement, of intriguing emotional drift. Think of Neil Young's 1970 album After the Gold Rush, a genre cornerstone whose songs sway between togetherness and dissonance. It features tracks such as Southern Man that bristle with urgency, and Don't Let It Bring You Down, which drifts between melancholy and resolve. Or take Joni Mitchell's 1971 album Blue, where A Case of You feels fragile and raw, like it could unravel at any moment. These songs and albums sound intimate, but never inherently inert. With Velvet Sundown, everything sounds nice, but nothing surprises. And for music made by a system designed to predict, maybe that's the only extent it can currently produce. This is what makes the band's creator or creators - they haven't been revealed - choice of genre strange. You'd think AI's full-throttled invasion into popular music would begin on more familiar terrain such as electronic dance music or hip-hop – music built on software, loops and programmed rhythm. But instead, Velvet Sundown is making guitar-based music and those limits are clear. Rock, folk, Americana – are genres that rely on, or even revel in, human traits – timing that's slightly off, choruses that perhaps run too long and vocals that crack. They're messy in nature. For all the cliches about four chords and a chorus, guitar music works because it's imperfect. AI can sketch the outline, but it can't inject the feeling or attitude that pushes a song somewhere unexpected. Which brings us to the broader problem, not with Velvet Sundown, but with the ecosystem they're presently thriving in. Their success is less about the quality of AI replication and more about how streaming has reshaped what listeners value in music. Playlists used to be about exploration and discovery, and now they are seemingly about consistency. Mood-based curation, such as the unofficial Spotify playlist Good Mornings – Happily Positive Music to the Start the Day featuring Velvet Sundown, has flattened the sonic landscape to the point where a fake song can sit comfortably between works by real, era-defining artists such as The Beatles and Billie Eilish. The result is a listening culture increasingly valuing indistinction. Music becomes background and texture, not narrative or expression. The reported calls by artists and industry to flag or ban AI bands such as Velvet Sundown – who are, unsurprisingly, back with another album next week – are understandable. But that's not the only answer. We don't need fewer AI bands, we just need more human ones. Artists that can create music that is, perhaps, as focused as Velvet Sundown but with the kind of idiosyncratic touches and emotional expression that only humans can conjure. It's those qualities, more than anything, that have a chance of breaking the algorithm.
Times
18 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Times
Meet Velvet Sundown, Spotify's hottest new band. But are they real?
Their soft-rock songs have racked up more than 550,000 listeners on Spotify in a matter of weeks, but are the Velvet Sundown real or an AI-generated band? The group have all the hallmarks of AI, from their lifeless photographs to the lack of evidence the musicians exist or have ever played live. But just as their apparently hoodwinked 'fans' and the industry had concluded that this was another case of AI killing off real stars, the Velvet Sundown popped up to defend themselves. 'Absolutely crazy that so-called 'journalists' keep pushing the lazy, baseless theory that The Velvet Sundown is 'AI-generated' with zero evidence,' they wrote on X to their rather underwhelming audience of 92 followers. Please enable cookies and other technologies to view this content. You can update your cookies preferences any time using privacy manager. '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.'Just because we don't do TikTok dances or livestream our process doesn't mean we're fake … We are REAL!' Adding to the mystery is that this X account is not the one linked to from their Spotify profile. Whoever is making the pleas, they have fallen on deaf ears. Deezer, the streaming service that flags AI music on its platform, said on a label: 'Some tracks on this album may have been created using artificial intelligence'. However, Spotify does not have a policy of labelling AI music and some fans felt misled by the platform's 'verified artist' label attached to the Velvet Sundown, which only means that it is the artist's stream. Daniel Ek, Spotify's co-founder and chief executive, has been generally positive about the potential of AI's impact on music. He said in May: 'I'm mostly optimistic and mostly very excited because we're just in the beginning of understanding this future of creativity that we're entering. • Alexa's AI song generator angers music industry 'We want real humans to make it as artists and creators, but what is creativity in the future with AI? I don't know. What is music?' However, while some artists such as the producer Timbaland and Ryan Tedder, a songwriter for Adele and Taylor Swift, are embracing it, the technology represents a threat to different parts of the industry. • Jimmy Page: AI is putting the magic of human artistry at stake The new AI music-making platforms such as Suno and Udio are being sued by the record companies for breach of copyright. Fraudsters are also uploading AI tracks and getting bots to listen to them to generate revenue. Deezer said that 18 per cent of all music uploaded to the platform daily — more than 20,000 tracks — were 100 per cent AI-generated. Of these, 70 per cent were fraudulent, which risks crowding out genuine artists. Spotify has a policy of not manually recommending AI tracks on playlists and will ban AI songs that impersonate real artists. However, the Velvet Sundown's success appears to have stemmed from the fact that Spotify has been putting the band's songs on the popular Discover Weekly playlist, which is algorithmically created. The Velvet Sundown are not the only AI success story on Spotify. Music Business Worldwide this week identified 13 AI-made 'artists' on the platform with 4.1 million monthly listeners between them. They include a country artist called Aventhis (a million listeners), a group called the Devil Inside (700,000 listeners) and a Marvin Gaye-inspired Nick Hustles (200,000 listeners). • Will AI give us new McCartney and Dylan albums in 2060? The musician and author Chris Dalla Riva said on TikTok: 'Since it's so easy to generate music this way, you could flood services with this music and completely crowd out people who are trying to make a career as an artist, trying to make legitimate art. If you are just writing a prompt and generating hundreds of songs at scale, it's very clear that this is just a way for you to try to make money.'
San Francisco Chronicle
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
The Velvet Sundown, a suspected AI band, tops 550,000 listeners on Spotify in under a month
In a little less than a month, a band calling itself the Velvet Sundown has amassed more than 550,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. With two albums — 'Floating On Echoes' and 'Dust and Silence' — released in rapid succession in June, the group's sudden rise has been as mystifying as their digital footprint is sparse. The group's bio is drenched in dreamlike metaphor, introducing its members as 'vocalist and mellotron sorcerer Gabe Farrow,' guitarist Lennie West, bassist-synth alchemist Milo Rains and percussionist Orion 'Rio' Del Mar. But no trace of these supposed musicians exists online, not even a modest trail of interviews, performances or social media activity. That is, until an Instagram account surfaced on Friday, June 27, bearing images critics have called 'eerily AI-generated.' View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Velvet Sundown (@thevelvetsundownband) Skeptics have raised red flags across Reddit and music journalism circles. On Spotify, all songwriting and production credits go solely to the band, a rare practice in today's collaborative industry. There is no producer. There are no tour dates. There is no record label. Even a quote in their bio — 'they sound like the memory of something you never lived, and somehow make it feel real' — allegedly from Billboard is nowhere to be found in the publication's archives. 'The Velvet Sundown aren't trying to revive the past,' the band's 'verified artist' profile reads on Spotify. 'They're rewriting it. They sound like the memory of a time that never actually happened.' Photos of the band are bathed in amber light and have an almost airbrushed, artificial quality. But what stands out even more is the vacant, lifeless expression on each musician's face. One long-haired member holding an acoustic guitar — resembling a blend of singer Noah Kahan and 'Queer Eye' star Jonathan Van Ness — is especially uncanny: too flawless, too serene, more like a stock photo than a real person. Meanwhile, Deezer, a music streaming service that flags content it suspects is AI-generated, notes on the Velvet Sundown's profile on its site that 'some tracks on this album may have been created using artificial intelligence.' The group has reportedly been featured on more than 30 anonymous user playlists and recommended by Spotify's Discover Weekly algorithm, raising concerns about transparency and artist authenticity.
