By: Nick Gambino
Well, that didn’t take long. AI slop has made its way from the likes of Facebook, Instagram and YouTube and has finally landed on Spotify. A “band” called The Velvet Sundown appeared on the music streaming platform less than a month ago and in no time at all has amassed half a million monthly listeners.
Reddit users spotted that this was clearly an AI-generated band thanks to a few tell-tale signs. Most notably, the lyrics of songs were nonspecific and were missing – for lack of a better word – soul while images of the band on their Instagram account were clearly the product of generative AI.
After The Velvet Sundown’s X account refuted the claims that it was a non-human AI band, they finally copped to it and labeled the whole thing as an art hoax.
“Personally I’m interested in art hoaxes,” Andrew Frelon, the man behind the elaborate experiment said to Rolling Stone. “We live in a world now where things that are fake have sometimes even more impact than things that are real. And that’s messed up, but that’s the reality that we face now.”
During his convo with the publication, Frelon apparently pushed back on the claim that AI platform Suno or any other platform was used in creating the music. He claimed it was simply employed as a means to brainstorm songs. Upon further discussion he finally admitted that some of The Velvet Sundown’s songs were generated by Suno. Something tells me they all were, but only he knows.
The real question is how did this fake band gain such a big following in only a few weeks? There are humans with way better music on Spotify that have been at it for years and have failed to capture an audience that size. I’m sure a big part of that boost was due to the viral speculation that this whole band was AI which pushed people to go find out for themselves.
But still, it makes one wonder if there’s something else at play here. Did they manipulate the algorithm in some way or was Spotify involved in pushing music not created by humans? Do they see this as a way to spend less to have “music” on the streaming platform? Is this the future of music streamers?
I don’t know the answer, but it’s something we should keep our eye on.
