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"There's not a shred of evidence on the internet that this band has ever existed": This apparently AI-generated artist (Velvet Sundown) is racking up hundreds of thousands of Spotify streams
Music Radar ^ | June 27, 2025 | Matt Mullen

Posted on 07/01/2025 5:39:56 PM PDT by DoodleBob

…Smuggled into popular playlists and hidden in plain sight among authentic, well-known tracks, AI-generated artists with fake photos, ChatGPT-generated biographies and no genuine fans to speak of are picking up hundreds of thousands of streams.

One such artist is The Velvet Sundown, a band with almost 350,000 monthly Spotify listeners but no discernible online presence or social media accounts. ("There's not a shred of evidence on the internet that this band has ever existed," as one Redditor put it.) While we can't confirm that the band's music is AI-generated, a glance at their artist image and bio should be enough to persuade even the least skeptical observer.

"The Velvet Sundown don’t just play music — they conjure worlds," reads the group's Spotify profile, which we're about 99% certain has been authored by ChatGPT. "Somewhere between the ghost of Laurel Canyon and the echo of a Berlin warehouse, this four-piece band bends time, fusing 1970s psychedelic textures with cinematic alt-pop and dreamy analog soul."

The biography tellingly states that the band's music "feels like a hallucination you want to stay lost in," their live shows playing like "lucid dreams" and their albums "unfolding like lost soundtracks to films that were never made". There's even a seemingly bogus quote from Billboard rounding things off, claiming that the band "sound like the memory of something you never lived, and somehow make it feel real”.

Velvet Sundown tracks have been identified in more than 30 popular playlists created by anonymous curator accounts, and have even begun popping up in Spotify users' Discover Weekly, personalized playlists generated by the platform's recommendation algorithm. The band's music has also been uploaded to Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube and Deezer, the latter's AI detection tool flagging The Velvet Sundown's music as potentially AI-generated.

(Excerpt) Read more at musicradar.com ...


TOPICS: Computers/Internet; Society
KEYWORDS: ai; aiand; aiband; velvet; velvetsundown
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To: SunkenCiv

Some random dude talking isn’t proof... Proof would be a live show(s) that no one seems to be claiming they’ve been to...

Also, a Twitter account doesn’t mean anything. Their description is “We’re not AI”; the only three posts visible are all “We’re not AI”... Wouldn’t a real band have more to talk about and post than just being sure everyone knows they “aren’t AI”?


61 posted on 07/02/2025 9:49:57 PM PDT by Svartalfiar (-)
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To: dznutz

Not bad, but this one has a much fuller sound to it!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw6QG3ojmZI


62 posted on 07/02/2025 10:04:09 PM PDT by Svartalfiar (-)
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To: Svartalfiar

Oh, I agree. I follow a similar guideline here on FR.


63 posted on 07/03/2025 9:13:51 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (The moron troll Ted Holden believes that humans originated on Ganymede.)
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