AI-Generated Band "The Velvet Sundown" Sparks Controversy and Debate in Music Industry

Band explodes in popularity overnight has a big secret that could sink them

TL;DR: The Velvet Sundown is an AI-generated band gaining rapid popularity with their debut album "Floating on Echoes" and follow-up releases. Their music, visuals, and backstory are created using artificial intelligence, challenging traditional notions of authorship and the future of AI-driven entertainment. The Velvet Sundown is a band that is gaining intense popularity with the release of the song "Dust On the Wind," which is a track from the band's debut album, Floating on Echoes, which was published on Spotify on June 5. Floating on Echoes has since exploded in popularity, with Dust On the Wind being streamed more than two million times on the platform, and the other songs on the album being streamed hundreds of thousands of times. Listeners were surprised to see that Velvet Sundown, a band that includes singer Gabe Farrow, guitarist Lennie West, keyboardist Milo Rains, and drummer Orion "Rio" Del Mar, was able to release a second album on June 20, called Dust And Silence. An unusually fast turnaround time for even an extremely adept band, let alone an up-and-comer. Things turned from surprising to suspicious when a third and then a fourth album were released. What is their secret? The Velvet Sundown aren't actually real people, but were created with AI. All of their music is AI-generated, including their promotional shots and backstory. After the explosion in popularity, The Velvet Sundown changed their biography in the "About" section of their Spotify listing, writing, "The Velvet Sundown is a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction, and composed, voiced, and visualized with the support of artificial intelligence." "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. All characters, stories, music, voices and lyrics are original creations generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools employed as creative instruments. Any resemblance to actual places, events or persons -living or deceased- is purely coincidental and unintentional. Not quite human. Not quite machine. The Velvet Sundown lives somewhere in between." The existence of this band and the popularity it has gained in such a short amount of time raises a philosophical question about AI tools being used to create art. Does it really matter if the band is not real people if the music "they" make is still enjoyable to listen to? Do you listen to the band for the people behind the instruments or for the music itself? In some ways, The Velvet Sundown is a proof of concept for the entertainment industry - AI-generated content can be popular, and it can be made from your living room couch. I believe it will only be a matter of time before there will be a movie that becomes extremely popular that hundreds of thousands of people enjoy, only for those viewers to find out after it has already gone viral that it was entirely made with AI. The question will be, does that retroactively ruin the experience they had during the movie? If so, why? If the purpose of entertainment is to entertain, and that was achieved, it shouldn't matter who or what created it. While I personally side with enjoying art that humans created, I can't help but be somewhat morbidly curious about how the entertainment industry is going to deal with more instances of "The Velvet Sundown," and how people are going to react when they learn the entertainment they have been enjoying, or possibly even fallen in love with, was AI-generated.

Velvet Sundown with 1 million plays on Spotify revealed to be an AI-generated band - VnExpress International

Velvet Sundown, a band that accumulated over one million streams on Spotify, has been revealed to be entirely AI-generated. This has fueled wider debates over authenticity in the music industry. Insiders argue that streaming platforms should be legally required to label AI-generated content so listeners can make informed choices. The band had initially described itself as "a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction," and denied it was AI-generated, the Guardian reported. The group released two albums in June, Floating On Echoes and Dust And Silence, both bearing striking similarities to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's folk-rock style. On July 2, a representative of the band who identified himself as an "adjunct" member, told Rolling Stone that the Velvet Sundown was using the generative AI platform Suno to create their music. He also described the project as an "art hoax." The band's official social media accounts pushed back on these claims before confirming that Velvet Sundown was, in fact, AI-generated. They classify the band as "not quite human, not quite machine," but existing somewhere between the two. Roberto Neri, CEO of the Ivors Academy, expressed serious concerns over transparency and authorship, especially as AI bands like Velvet Sundown reach large audiences without human songwriters or performers. He acknowledged AI's potential to support human creativity if used ethically and cautiously. Australian music company Vinyl Group quickly grabbed the domain velvetsundown.com after catching wind of the outrage, according to MediaWeek. Instead of promoting the project further, the website has since become a space dedicated to exploring generative art, algorithm-driven creativity and the evolving concept of authorship in an increasingly synthetic era. It is currently unclear what source material Velvet Sundown's albums were trained on. Critics argue this lack of transparency could take independent artists away from their deserved royalties and recognition. Spotify does not label music as AI-generated, and has faced criticism in the past for including fictitious stock music creators in its playlists. A Spotify spokesperson responded by saying the platform does not prioritize AI music and that all content is uploaded by licensed third-party distributors regardless of their creators.

Velvet Sundown with 1M plays on Spotify revealed to be an AI-generated band - VnExpress International

Velvet Sundown, a band that accumulated over one million streams on Spotify, has been revealed to be entirely AI-generated. This has fueled wider debates over authenticity in the music industry. Insiders argue that streaming platforms should be legally required to label AI-generated content so listeners can make informed choices. The band had initially described itself as "a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction," and denied it was AI-generated, the Guardian reported. The group released two albums in June, Floating On Echoes and Dust And Silence, both bearing striking similarities to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's folk-rock style. On July 2, a representative of the band who identified himself as an "adjunct" member, told Rolling Stone that the Velvet Sundown was using the generative AI platform Suno to create their music. He also described the project as an "art hoax." The band's official social media accounts pushed back on these claims before confirming that Velvet Sundown was, in fact, AI-generated. They classify the band as "not quite human, not quite machine," but existing somewhere between the two. Roberto Neri, CEO of the Ivors Academy, expressed serious concerns over transparency and authorship, especially as AI bands like Velvet Sundown reach large audiences without human songwriters or performers. He acknowledged AI's potential to support human creativity if used ethically and cautiously. Australian music company Vinyl Group quickly grabbed the domain velvetsundown.com after catching wind of the outrage, according to MediaWeek. Instead of promoting the project further, the website has since become a space dedicated to exploring generative art, algorithm-driven creativity and the evolving concept of authorship in an increasingly synthetic era. It is currently unclear what source material Velvet Sundown's albums were trained on. Critics argue this lack of transparency could take independent artists away from their deserved royalties and recognition. Spotify does not label music as AI-generated, and has faced criticism in the past for including fictitious stock music creators in its playlists. A Spotify spokesperson responded by saying the platform does not prioritize AI music and that all content is uploaded by licensed third-party distributors regardless of their creators.