02/07/2025
Though they're not yet dominating the charts, disturbingly realistic AI-generated songs are slowly but surely creeping into our headphones - and you may even be listening to them without realizing what you're hearing. 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 500,000 monthly Spotify listeners but no discernible online presence or social media accounts. 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 band's line-up ostensibly features "mellotron sorcerer" Gabe Farrow, "free-spirited percussionist" Orion “Rio” Del Mar, "synth alchemist" Milo Rains and guitarist Lennie West, four musicians that turn up a grand total of zero appearances in Google search results between them.
As for the music itself, the band's country-tinged roots-rock bears the unmistakably lo-fi veneer of a Suno creation, but is convincing enough to pass by undetected if sandwiched in a playlist between two authentic songs. In fact, that's exactly where it's been found.
Who is behind The Velvet Sundown, and how has the music made its way into playlists themed around TV soundtracks and Vietnam War-era artists, saved by more than half a million listeners?
The answer to both of these questions remains a mystery, but the band's growing popularity confirms that of the thousands of AI-generated tracks uploaded to streaming services each day, many are gaining a foothold - and with it, taking money out of the pockets of real artists making real music.
