AI Band The Velvet Sundown Revealed

The Velvet Sundown, the viral AI band surging to over 900,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, has officially confirmed what many had already speculated: their music is entirely AI-generated. The revelation came through an update to their Spotify bio, which now reads, “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 statement clarifies that the band aims to serve as an “ongoing artistic provocation” designed to challenge contemporary notions of authorship, identity, and music’s future in the context of artificial intelligence.

Since emerging unexpectedly in June, The Velvet Sundown has attracted significant media attention and was featured on popular Spotify playlists. Intriguingly, the band has also been the focal point of a hoax perpetrated by an individual named Andrew Frelon, who impersonated the band and claimed to be its spokesperson in interactions with media outlets, including a notable phone interview with Rolling Stone. Frelon later stated that his elaborate hoax was a social experiment to test the media’s credibility.

Continuing their provocative mission, the band’s bio explains that “all characters, stories, music, voices, and lyrics are original creations generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools employed as creative instruments.” The disclaimer emphasizes that any resemblance to actual locations or persons is coincidental, affirming their position as existing in a liminal space between human and machine.

Glenn McDonald, a former “data alchemist” for Spotify, noted that The Velvet Sundown’s sudden popularity could stem from Spotify’s shift towards algorithmic playlist placement. This development indicates a move away from traditional, human-driven song selection processes, allowing algorithms to recommend tracks based on audio characteristics—further complicating the nature of musical discovery in the age of AI.