Half a Million Spotify Users Accidentally Listened to an AI-Created Band

In less than a month, The Velvet Sundown has released two albums, Floating On Echoes and Dust and Silence. A third album is expected in two weeks. The songs are classic rock, with heavy use of reverb and autotune.

If you listen to just one song on a shuffle playlist, you might not notice anything unusual. But when you listen to it over and over again, the monotony and lack of depth begin to show – the hallmarks of machine-generated music .

The band has no real members but attracts listeners online. (Source: Arstechnica)

Band without real people

Many users began to doubt the band's true existence over the past week, as threads on Reddit and X (Twitter) pointed out that there was no verified information about its members. The group's bio lists four members, but none of them exist outside of The Velvet Sundown's albums and social media accounts. The group's songs were also mysteriously added to a series of user-generated playlists, sending its listener count soaring from 300,000 to over 500,000 in just a few days.

The Velvet Sundown Instagram account has just been created. (Source: Arstechnica)

When The Velvet Sundowns launched their Instagram account on June 27, all suspicions were confirmed: The “people” in the photos were clearly AI-generated. Even past the days of recognizing AI by counting on your fingers, odd details still emerged. In one post, the group claimed to have bought burgers to celebrate their success, but there were more burgers than plates, and the food was arranged haphazardly around the table. The band “members” also appeared overly smooth and symmetrical—a hallmark of AI-generated images.

More transparency needed with AI music

The Velvet Sundowns aren’t alone. On a recent episode of Last Week Tonight, host John Oliver mentioned another AI band called The Devil Inside, which has released 10 albums in two years. Both groups have multiple songs that mention “dust” and “wind” – possibly a result of repetition in the music-generating model, or coming from the same AI producer.

Spotify currently does not require artists to disclose whether a song was created entirely with AI. Meanwhile, Deezer – which also released The Velvet Sundown’s music – has taken a tougher stance. According to NME, the group’s Deezer bio includes a warning: “Some tracks on this album may have been created using artificial intelligence.” Spotify’s bio previously cited praise from Billboard, but the Billboard name has since been removed, although the compliment remains.

Currently, the group’s Instagram account is flooded with comments criticizing the use of AI. However, in the future, it may not be easy to distinguish between human-made art and the product of algorithms.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to listen to AI-generated music—there are already a nearly limitless number of YouTube channels streaming AI music. The technology has come a long way from the early days of Google MusicLM or OpenAI Jukebox. But listeners have a right to know what’s human and what’s machine.

Minh Hoan

Source: https://vtcnews.vn/nua-trieu-nguoi-dung-spotify-vo-tinh-nghe-mot-ban-nhac-do-ai-tao-ra-ar952807.html