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30th June 2025
10:18am BST
Seemingly AI-generated band The Velvet Sundown have racked up a great amount of views despite 'existing' for less than a month.
The psych-rock group currently has two albums on the popular streaming platform, Spotify, accumulating over 400,000 monthly listeners.
The band currently have two albums on their Spotify: 'Floating On Echoes', was released on June 5, and 'Dust and Silence' came out on June 20.
According to their bio on Spotify, the band consists of four members, comprised of "vocalist and mellotron sorcerer Gabe Farrow, guitarist Lennie West, bassist-synth alchemist Milo Rains, and free-spirited percussionist Orion 'Rio' Del Marr", and they produce "cinematic alt-pop and dreamy analogue soul."
However, it didn't take long for listeners to question the legitimacy of the new psych-rock group.
Reddit users who had come across the band in their Discover Weekly playlist began digging and found little to nothing about the band's background outside of their Spotify profiles.
Speculation only grew after the band created an Instagram account on Friday (June 27), which features images of them that Redditors have said look a lot like AI-generated images.
The band's bio includes a Billboard quote, claiming Velvet Sundown's music sounds like “the memory of something you never lived, and somehow makes it feel real,” however, Billboard has never actually published this.
Spotify doesn't have any restrictions in place concerning the technology musicians use, allowing AI-generated music.
The Velvet Sundown's music is also available on other streaming platforms, including Apple Music and Deezer.
Deezer is in the process of developing technology to identify music made with artificial intelligence so that they can publicly tag AI-generated music.
There's a lot of controversy concerning AI technology in the music industry currently, due to a recent study suggesting that people working in music are likely to lose a quarter of their income due to Artificial Intelligence over the next four years.
Deezer has reported that around 10,000 AI-generated tracks are submitted to the platform daily, resulting in 10 per cent of all its music uploads.
Several celebrities, including Elton John, Coldplay, Dua Lipa, Kate Bush, and Paul McCartney, called on the UK government to change copyright laws amid the threat from AI, per NME.
