Has an AI “band” surpassed 370,000 Spotify monthly listeners in a matter of weeks? That seems to be the case, and the episode is raising far-reaching questions. Photo Credit: Possessed Photography
Has an AI “artist” topped 370,000 Spotify monthly listeners in just weeks? It sure seems that way, and the development is raising new questions about machine-generated tracks’ streaming prevalence.
Word of that presumably AI-powered “band,” The Velvet Sundown, appears to have started circulating earlier this week on Reddit. There, multiple users said some of the relevant tracks had arrived in their Discover Weekly playlists.
Evidently, it didn’t take long for many of the same individuals to notice the likely AI-generated image of Velvet Sundown’s “members.” Said image has a distinct “AI look” to it and, among other things, doesn’t jump out as the sort of shot a proper (i.e., human) act would ever use.
More concretely, image-analysis platform Sightengine pointed to a 99% chance that gen AI had pumped out the creation, with GPT-4o far and away the likeliest culprit. The same source attached an identical percentage to the cover art for Velvet Sundown’s albums.
Regarding the plural “albums”: The Velvet Sundown has shelled out two 13-track works – Floating on Echoes and Dust and Silence – during June alone. And a third, entitled Paper Sun Rebellion, already has a Spotify release-countdown timer set for July 14th.
To state the obvious, the rapid-fire release schedule screams AI audio. So does Velvet Sundown’s Spotify artist-profile description: “Formed by vocalist and mellotron sorcerer Gabe Farrow, guitarist Lennie West, bassist-synth alchemist Milo Rains, and free-spirited percussionist Orion ‘Rio’ Del Mar, the band feels like a hallucination you want to stay lost in. Their live shows play like lucid dreams,” the text reads in part.
Unsurprisingly, then, there doesn’t appear to be any digital footprint whatsoever for people by those names. Nor does Velvet Sundown seem to have a website or social profiles, let alone concert footage. When it comes to straight audio, Deezer, which tags AI uploads accordingly, has applied the appropriate identification to Velvet Sundown’s uploads.
Now for more pressing questions: How did the (probably) AI “artist” rack up hundreds of thousands of Spotify monthly listeners and streams in a matter of weeks? And with AI audio becoming increasingly sophisticated, how can we prevent non-human profiles from taking royalties as well as the spotlight away from actual music professionals?
Neither query has a compact answer. On the former front, Music Ally noted Velvet Sundown’s presence on all manner of Spotify playlists – including “Vietnam War Music” (630,000 saves) and “Sensual Songs” (161,000 saves).
There’s certainly a lot to explore in that multifaceted sub-topic. But for the time being, it’s worth reiterating Spotify’s relatively effective fake-stream detection and the comparatively small 7,200 views (with 111 subs) attributable to The Velvet Sundown on YouTube.
For the latter question, the logical next step – assuming the goal is preventing AI audio from diverting listeners and compensation – is isolating artificial intelligence songs from real music. Then, services can better scrutinize consumption on the AI side, which is inherently susceptible to fraud.
That might seem aggressive, but Deezer is halfway there with its aforementioned tagging initiative. In the bigger picture, it’s unclear whether there’s another way to effectively counteract the tsunami of AI slop that’s crashing down upon not just music services, but social and video-sharing platforms.
Furthermore, the stakes are higher in the music world, where per-stream royalty rates are already far from ideal and anti-indie policies are in many ways the norm.
