Interested in music about a fictional war sung by a fictional band? Well, the new AI-generated band The Velvet Sundown has you covered. Since the ‘band’s’ initial release on June 5, they have gone on to have two officially released albums and a third on its way. Their first album, Floating On Echoes was released on June 5 and their second, Dust And Silence was released on June 20. According to Spotify, their third album, Paper Sun Rebellion is already set to release on July 14. One of the most concerning parts about this ‘band’ is the fact that they fail to mention that they are AI-generated as the writing/production/performance credits all list only the band’s name. According to Stereogum, the only admission that The Velvet Sundown is AI-generated is on their Deezer profile in which it is stated that “some tracks on this album may have been created using artificial intelligence.” This is only because Deezer has an AI recognition tool built into its platform, of which the platform has reported that 20,000 fully AI-generated tracks were uploaded in April. This is apparently an 8% increase from Deezer’s report just three months ago. The ‘band’ can also be found on Apple Music and Amazon Music.
As for the actual ‘band,’ The Velvet Sundown is very clearly AI-generated in its entirety. Upon looking at their Spotify profile, one can immediately notice that their profile picture is four AI-generated people. Their overly smooth and shiny faces make this more than apparent, not to mention the various images they have shared on their official Instagram account. The ‘band’ supposedly consists of four members, vocalist Gabe Farrow, guitarist Lennie West, bassist Milo Rains and percussionist Orion ‘Rio’ Del Mar. Of course, none of these musicians actually exist despite their desperate attempts to appear real as noted through their bizarre Instagram posts. Their Instagram account was created on June 27 and they have since uploaded nine posts. Their posts all feature the same orangish lighting often found in the latest AI-generated images and feature a variety of absurdities such as repeating outfits, changing facial features, illogical placements of instruments and even a fifth burger in an image with only the four of them. Their Spotify bio is just as nonsensical as it states, “The Velvet Sundown aren’t trying to revive the past. They’re rewriting it. They sound like the memory of a time that never actually happened…but somehow they make it feel real.” They even included a made-up quote attributed to Billboard that states only exactly the same phrasing, “They sound like the memory of something you never lived, and somehow make it feel real.”
Despite all this, the ‘band’ has somehow garnered over 400,000 monthly listeners on Spotify after existing for less than a month and having close to no publicity. Many users have suggested that these streams are botted which would go against Spotify’s terms and conditions. Otherwise, Spotify does allow AI music and the platform has supposedly been boosting The Velvet Sundown by its algorithmically-driven recommendations. The ‘band’ can also be found on multiple user-generated Spotify playlists with a strange amount of them being popular television show soundtracks. While The Velvet Sundown’s incredibly generic attempt at psychedelic rock does not seem to rival any non-AI bands yet, it is only one of the latest AI-generated artists appearing on music platforms.
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