Photo Credit: AI band The Velvet Sundown
As an AI band goes viral on Spotify, a former employee at the streaming juggernaut says the platform has “no protections” against AI bands and music.
The Velvet Sundown, a fake band created using generative-AI platform Suno, has gone viral after garnering 500,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. In an interview with Rolling Stone, a spokesperson for the “band” says the project is an “art hoax.” But Spotify’s algorithms make no distinction when it comes to recommending music to its listeners.
Originally, the Velvet Sundown repeatedly denied any AI usage after multiple reports on their sudden and mysterious popularity. But now, band spokesperson and “adjunct” member Andrew Frelon fully admits: “It’s marketing. It’s trolling. People before, they didn’t care about what we did, and now suddenly, we’re talking to Rolling Stone. So it’s like, ‘Is this wrong?’”
Frelon told Rolling Stone in a phone interview on Tuesday that he initially admitted that AI was only involved in the “brainstorming” phase for the music. Then he admitted to using Suno, but “not in the final project.” Finally, he acknowledged that at least some of the band’s songs—he doesn’t want to specify which ones—are Suno-generated.
He also admitted that the Velvet Sundown utilizes Suno’s “Persona” feature. It’s the same feature used by Timbaland to create his controversial “TaTa” AI artist for his latest project. But Frelon says he doesn’t use it on every track.
It’s worth pointing out that other streaming services, like Deezer, note that some tracks by the band “may have been created using artificial intelligence.” That tipped off some folks to the nature of the band even before it became more widely discussed that Velvet Sundown seemed not to exist before June—or at all. Deezer says around 18% of music uploaded to its platform is AI generated.
But Spotify actually has no rules against AI music. Former Spotify data analyst Glenn McDonald has said that “fake listeners were a larger problem than fake music. It might have flipped.” According to McDonald, the Velvet Sundown’s sudden prominence on Spotify could be the result of several factors.
This includes, most egregiously, that the platform’s recommendations systems have moved “away from understandable algorithms with strong grounding in actual human listening and communities.” Instead, it’s moved toward AI-powered systems that “can pick songs for recommendations based on characteristics of their audio.”
McDonald says these contribute to the increased “lottery-like dynamics of the system,” amounting to fewer reasons why a fake band couldn’t be successful. “Most fake bands still won’t be successful, and of course, nobody notices when an AI band gets no listeners, but there are no protections against it happening. And probably, from Spotify’s point of view, it’s not even clear that this is a bad thing to be ‘protected’ against.”
But the Velvet Sudown’s sudden viral popularity seems to be rooted in the debate over their existence, and the conversations that sparked. According to Music Ally, most of the Spotify playlists that featured the band were started by just four accounts. So what exactly happened here, if fake listeners weren’t at play?
“It’s because they’re AI, not because the music’s great,” a veteran A&R executive who wished to remain anonymous told Rolling Stone. “It doesn’t feel authentic. That said, it’s clearly just a matter of time before AI creates a genuine hit song. Not convinced yet it will create a sustainable hit artist. My prediction is that a hit song will appear that the public loves. At that point, someone will reveal it to be AI. No one will care because they love the song.”
Meanwhile, Frelon says that people need to get used to the idea that AI tools are out there and are going to continue being used in music, not just in so-called hoaxes like the Velvet Sundown.
“I respect that people have really strong emotions about this,” he said. “But I think it’s important that we allow artists to experiment with new technologies and new tools, try things out, and not freak out at people just because they’re using a program or not using a program. People have this idea that you have to please everybody and you have to follow the rules. And that’s not how music and culture progress.”
