Latest news with #GabeFarrow
News.com.au
20 hours ago
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
The Velvet Sundown: Inside the bizarre truth about popular band
Dust on the wind, boots on the ground. Smoke in the sky, no peace found Rivers run red, the drums roll slow. Tell me brother, where do we go? These are the lyrics that open Dust On the Wind, the first track from The Velvet Sundown's debut album, Floating on Echoes. It landed on Spotify on June 5, a melancholic ballad about the bloody futility of war set to a twangy guitar riff. Stylised images of the band showed singer Gabe Farrow, guitarist Lennie West, keyboardist Milo Rains, and drummer Orion 'Rio' Del Mar, who looked like the bastard love children of a Crosby, Stills and Nash tribute act dressed exclusively in Mumford and Sons' cast offs. Dust was soon appearing on Spotify playlists with hundreds of thousands of saves. In total, Floating has been streamed nearly five million times. Then something very weird happened. On June 20 the Velvet boys put out a second album, Dust And Silence. It was all an unthinkably fast turnaround even for a band who can go vanilla-ishly against stereotype, has never seen the wrong end of a whiskey bottle or been plagued by toxic Liam/Noel juju. Then came a third and a fourth album. Their secret: The Velvet Sundown are AI-generated. Their music, promo shots and backstory were created by AI, The Guardian reported this week. No one has copped to being the brains behind this all and once Velvet's unrealness started making headlines, 'they' changed 'their' bio to read, 'Not quite human. Not quite machine.' Whether listeners twigged or not, between June 29 and July 1, Dust on the Wind topped Spotify's daily Viral 50 chart in Britain, Norway and Sweden. Who knew the rise of our digital overlords would be quite so catchy? The Terminator never spun a decent tune now did he? The bottom line: Hollywood and the music industry in particular are being run over by a truck driven by the creepily happy Gab, Lennie, Milo and Rio. We have had months, years of Chicken Little-style sky-is-falling, doom-saying, and end-is-nighing about AI but now a terrifying amount is happening terrifyingly fast. In January a podcast featuring legendary British broadcaster Michael Parkinson was launched, the debut episode seeing him speak to Jason Derulo. Unremarkable except for the fact that Parkinson died in 2023. To create the show, his son and a production company trained an AI 'Parky' by feeding it the 2,000 real interviews he had done over his career. In June, Vin Diesel announced the final installment in the Fast & Furious franchise - and promised to bring back Paul Walker's character. Walker, of course, was killed in a car accident in 2013. Since 2023 the CAA talent agency, which represents stars like Beyoncé and George Clooney , has been quietly working to'capture the likeness of all its clients so it could own and control the rights to their image,' for possible future AI use, New York magazine recently revealed. AI could also see the rise of 'fan episodes'. Diehards of a particular show won't have to restrict themselves to writing exhaustively long, panty fan-fic but will one day be able to to 'create their own episodes', according to veteran TV producer and Thursday Murder Club author Richard Osman. Speaking on his brilliant Rest is Entertainment podcast with co-host Marina Hyde, he argued that in the future actors and creators will not just sign up for projects but will sign 'a contract that allows an AI use of their image' within the 'gated wall' of a particular project or series. This will mean that fans will be able to 'constantly remix their favourite television programs' and 'create their own episodes' of hit shows. (How many prompts are going to read 'Now kiss'?) In Hollywood alone there are now nearly 100 AI studios. 'Everyone's using it,' a CAA agent told New York magazine. 'They just don't talk about it.' The race is now on for the first fully AI series or movie. Staircase studio took the lead in March when it released the first five minutes of what will be the feature-length The Woman With Red Hair, which will tell the true story of Dutch resistance fighter Johanna 'Hannie'. Helmed by a Divergent series producer, the Woman taster is an eerie watch. While some moments are obviously unreal, other shots, especially of streetscapes and sweeping city views, are spookily believable. Fashion is not immune here. In March H&M released suitably artsy black and white shots of model Mathilda Gvarliani doing some pouting in a white tank. Only one of them was the real Gvarliani. This was part of the global fashion giant's project to create 30 digital 'twins' of actual models, which in turn they will use to create AI-generated images for marketing campaigns and social media. (The models will retain the rights to their digital replicas and the retailer said the AI images would be marked as such.) Delve into how far and fast AI is reaching and it is breathtaking in every sense of the word. What The Velvet Sundown saga makes clear is that we might not quite have gotten to the other side of the uncanny valley but we are in the midst of a Gutenberg-like watershed moment for creative industries. Very very soon, no camera shot will be impossible, no location out of reach, no pose unachievable, no sound uncreatable, no deadness of star insurmountable. On one hand, this means the barriers for entry into the famously hard-to-break-into entertainment biz have just fallen. 19-years-old and have a brilliant film idea? Go forth and create. On another, is anyone checking that the code doesn't careen off into the never never with no reasonable guard rails in place? There is another 'but' in all of this too. (I like big 'buts' and I cannot lie.) Just because you can make it and use it doesn't mean people will eagerly take it up. Already, in some instances, the giddy adoption of AI is being met with a swift backlash. On YouTube, The Woman With Red Hair taster has twice as many downvotes as upvotes. In June, MrBeast, the world's biggest YouTuber with more than 385 million subscribers, announced he was launching an AI thumbnail generator, which would allow users to mimic aspects of existing video art. Such was the vehemence of reaction, he was forced to kill it a week later. This month Spotify appeared to be cracking down on The Velvet Sundown, removing their fourth album and several uploads. Hours before I was set to file this story, the 'band' threw a spanner in the works. 'They' took to X, formerly Twitter, posting an ostensibly behind-the-scenes video and writing, 'Everyone who said we're 'not real' and asked for 'video proof' can now see for themselves! WE ARE 100 REAL!'. In the clip, the 'boys' say things like 'The song came to me after I fasted for three days in Joshua Tree with nothing but a deck of tarot cards' and 'I was trying to remember what stars sound like'. Muddling things even further, a cameo from what appears to be The Eagles' Tim Schmit. It's clearly not real-real per se but someone has to have laboured over a keyboard to conjure Gab, Lennie, Milo and Rio. Is it all an elaborate prank? A majors thesis in pixel form? A very bored 12-year-old's Frankenstein creation? As a TV show once taught us, the truth is out there.
Metro
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
Mystery AI rock band with over 1,000,000 streams sparks confusion and warnings
A mysterious new band is climbing the charts on Spotify, racking up over over a million listens in just a few weeks. The Velvet Sundown sound familiar, and their songs are perfectly listenable, if not the next Sweet Jane. But they're causing controversy because they're entirely AI-generated – and the streaming platform isn't making it obvious to listeners. When they first appeared on Spotify at the end of June, they had a 'verified artist' profile claiming that the band was 'formed by singer and mellotron player Gabe Farrow, guitarist Lennie West, Milo Rains, who crafts the band's textured synth sounds, and free-spirited percussionist Orion 'Rio' Del Mar'. But some soon became suspicious that none of them had any social media presence or evidence of existing outside of this bio. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Not quite what you'd expect if they'd been gigging and promoting themselves for years before their big break. The Velvet Sundown have now admitted that both the 'bandmates' and the music are AI generated. Even before this, Deezer, a rival music streaming service, had tagged their music as such. This had nothing to do with the images or promotion surrounding them, but was down to analysis of the music itself. Aurelien Herault, Chief Innovation Officer at Deezer, told Metro: We have trained our detection tool using datasets from a number of generative models, including Suno and Udio, which means that our detection tool is able to recognise the signals and sounds in fully AI-generated music that you don't find in authentic tracks. 'We have also made significant progress in training our detection tool to identify AI tracks even without a specific dataset to train on. 'Thanks to our tool, we are confident that the album pages that are currently tagged generated by AI on our platform are generated by AI.' Their software flagged The Velvet Sundown as being AI before the contoversy erupted, and so a label is now shown to users warning 'AI generated content. Some tracks on this album may have been created using artificial intelligence.' After speculation across news organisations, the 'band' admitted they were not real humans. Their Spotify profile now refers to them as 'a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction'. But their online presence is even odder than this, as there are multiple accounts claiming to be them on both X and Instagram. The band have ironically now accused one of these accounts of trying to 'hijack' their identity by 'creating fake profiles claiming to represent us'. An unofficial X profile wrote many posts such as: 'This is not a joke. This is our music, written in long, sweaty nights in a cramped bungalow in California with real instruments, real minds, and real soul. Every chord, every lyric, every mistake — HUMAN.' This prolific poster later unmasked themselves as 'Andrew Frelon', claiming their account was an art hoax making up posts using ChatGPT, and admitting they were still using a fake name. They wrote in a long post on Medium that they were interested in disinformation and generative AI, and saw an opportunity for mischief as the newly buzzy 'band' had no social media presence. The fake X account has more followers than the official X account, and also started posting first, so you can see why people got confused about all of this. We also sent them a message after they claimed to be a spokesperson for the band, but they did not respond when we asked for a video interview. The band also has at least five Instagram accounts claiming to be them, one of which is filled with what looks like AI generated images. These images were part of the reason the band was identified as fake in the first place, with oddities in the images like fudged fingers or a guitar with disappearing strings. But again, the band now say these are not from their official account. It's growing, and Deezer say they now see 20,000 tracks which are 100% AI generated submitted every single day, which has doubled from the start of the year. Mr Herault told Metro that artifically generated music now makes up approximately 18% of all tracks delivered to the platform. He said: 'At Deezer we want to prioritise revenues going to real artists, which is why we remove fully AI-generated tracks from algorithmic or editorial recommendations. 'We don't believe AI music is inherently good or bad, but we believe music fans have a right to know what they are listening to, which is why we opt for a transparent approach and tag AI-generated music on Deezer, in order to build trust with our users.' As the tech continues to improve, we will no doubt get tracks which sound great and are made by AI, at the same time as becomes more integrated in filmmaking and yes, maybe takes your white collar job. Spotify has been investing heavily in AI, and you can now use it to make you playlists or listen to a DJ curating songs for you. But it has also been accused of adding AI generated music to popular playlists like Ambient Chill and Peaceful Piano, without it being obvious to users. The company has not commented on this, but previously said it was 'categorically untrue' that it was creating AI music itself to fill playlists. Instagram has introduced a tag to show if something is made using AI, and videos made by Google Veo are watermarked. However, the industry standard is less clear when it comes to AI music, with Deezer currently the only streaming platform to tag it as such. One way scammers might benefit from uploading AI music to streaming platforms is by getting enough streams to earn them royalties. There are even so-called 'streaming farms' where tracks are listened to over and over again to try and game the system. So a song could be made by AI and listened to by bots on repeat, with humans barely part of the musical process at all. It would be too obvious if an unknown artist suddenly racked up millions of streams (much like with the Velvet Sundown). So to get around this, fraudsters flood streaming platforms with lots of fake songs which are each streamed just a few thousands times: enough to make money, but less likely to make people suspicious. Explaining the problem, Mr Herault said: If an artist is able to gain a significant number of users streaming their music, they then become entitled to a bigger share of the royalty pool. 'This is true whether an artist is using AI or not; the only difference being that AI music is significantly easier to produce.' More Trending He said that fraudulent streams 'are often generated by streaming farms or bots, which repeatedly 'listen' to tracks in order to inflate their streams and increase their share of the royalty pool.' Deezer said that up to 70% of streams of fully AI tracks are fraudulent, though currently AI tracks only make up 0.5% of overall streams. The company added: 'When detecting stream manipulation of any kind, Deezer excludes the streams from the royalty payments.' Although the Velvet Sundown profile on Spotify now tells listeners the truth, there is still no general system to flag AI content to users. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: Gavin Rossdale clears up decades-long misconception about his band Bush MORE: AI will replace these 10 jobs — but here's what workers can do instead MORE: Games Inbox: What is the next big game for Nintendo Switch 2?
Euronews
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Euronews
Fake AI band scandal: The Velvet Sundown controversy explained
Have you heard of the band The Velvet Sundown? They're blowing up right now, racking up more than a million monthly listeners on Spotify - which is pretty good going for a group that formed less than two months ago. What's also impressive is that the prolific four-piece psych-rock outfit have already released two albums on their "Verified Artist" profile: 'Floating On Echoes' and 'Dust And Silence', which were dropped on 5 and 20 June respectively. There are no signs of slowing down, as their new collection of 'cinematic alt-pop and dreamy analogue soul' is out soon, with their third opus titled 'Paper Sun Rebellion' coming out on 14 July. Vocalist and 'mellotron sorcerer' Gabe Farrow, guitarist Lennie West, 'bassist-synth alchemist' Milo Rains and 'free-spirited percussionist' Orion 'Rio' Del Mar must be thrilled with their sudden rise in popularity. At least they would be... if they were capable of human emotion. Yep, The Velvet Sundown don't exist. Not really. What fresh hell is this? Questions regarding the band's legitimacy came after Reddit users began searching for background information on the band, after their Discover Weekly playlists had been flooded with The Velvet Sundown songs. In case you were wondering, they sound... bland. And the insipid lyrical content doesn't help: 'Boots in the mud, sky burning red / Voices of reason lost in our heads / Radio hums while the silence screams / Truth slips away in American dreams.' Deep. Doubts persisted when the band created an Instagram account late June – an account which features yellow-tinted images of them looking like eerily airbrushed trustfund kids who didn't want to work for daddy's company and instead decided to become cookiecutter hipsters who pester you at music festivals by insisting that no musical decade will ever top the 70s. Une publication partagée par The Velvet Sundown (@thevelvetsundownband) Further suspicions were raised by the band's Spotify 'Verified Artist' bio: "There's something quietly spellbinding about The Velvet Sundown. You don't just listen to them, you drift into them. Their music doesn't shout for your attention; it seeps in slowly, like a scent that suddenly takes you back somewhere you didn't expect.' If you just felt your spleen drafting a resignation letter because of all your violent cringing, you're only human. Unlike The Velvet Sundown. Faced with growing criticism, the band defended themselves on their X account Velvet Sundown (The Real Band Not The AI Band): 'Absolutely crazy that so-called 'journalists' keep pushing the lazy, baseless theory that The Velvet Sundown is 'AI-generated' with zero evidence.' "Not a single one of these 'writers' has reached out, visited a show, or listened beyond the Spotify algorithm." The band doubled down by writing: 'This is not a joke. This is our music, written in long, sweaty nights in a cramped bungalow in California with real instruments, real minds, and real soul. Every chord, every lyric, every mistake – HUMAN.' It's worth mentioning that the description attached to their X handle reads: "Just A Bunch of Very Real Dudes In A Totally Real Band Keeping It Extremely Real! No, We Never Use AI!" The rockers doth protest too much? Une publication partagée par The Velvet Sundown (@thevelvetsundownband) Handily, Spotify – which allows AI-generated music and does not require disclosure that the technology has been used - was not responding to any requests for a comment. Silence for some, debunking for others, as the streaming platform's competitor Deezer wasted no time in flagging the band's album 'Dust And Silence' as being '100% generated by AI.' Deezer reiterated its commitment to not accepting content generated entirely by AI. It did not say it was against the use of AI as an aid to creation, but issued a press release saying: 'In order to protect artists' remuneration and guarantee an optimal user experience, Deezer currently excludes 100% AI tracks from its algorithmic and editorial recommendations.' The platform also shared an alarming figure: nearly 20% of music uploaded to their platform has been artificially created. That number represents a near-doubling in three months. And it's only going to get worse. Then, the "Extremely Real" jig was up As the Swedish proverb goes: 'What is hidden in the snow will come forth in the thaw.' In a new revision to their Spotify bio, The Velvet Sundown came clean and confirmed what had gradually seemed obvious: the band had lied, and their music was, in fact, AI-generated. 'The Velvet Sundown is a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction, and composed, voiced, and visualized with the support of artificial intelligence,' the band bio now reads. 'This isn't a trick — it's a mirror. An ongoing artistic provocation designed to challenge the boundaries of authorship, identity, and the future of music itself in the age of AI.' The Spotify bio goes on to say: 'All characters, stories, music, voices and lyrics are original creations generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools employed as creative instruments. Any resemblance to actual places, events or persons – living or deceased – is purely coincidental and unintentional.' It concludes: 'Not quite human. Not quite machine. The Velvet Sundown lives somewhere in between.' Jokes apparently happen in that somewhere in between space, as the band posted on X: "They said we weren't real. Maybe you're not real either." Hilarious. No laughing matter Une publication partagée par The Velvet Sundown (@thevelvetsundownband) This 'ongoing artistic provocation' is not as clever as it thinks it is. It comes during a difficult period in the music industry, where AI-generated music is increasingly polluting listening platforms. A report published last December in Harper's Magazine alleged Spotify is supplementing playlists with 'ghost artists' to decrease royalty payouts. These claims were highlighted in Liz Pelly's investigative book 'Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist.' In her book, published by Hodder & Stoughton, the journalist critically examines Spotify's practices and explains that the platform has no qualms when it comes to slipping music generated by fake AI-generated 'artists' into popular playlists. A separate study also released last December estimated that without intervention from policymakers, people working in music are likely to lose more than 20 per cent of their income to AI over the next four years. Conversely, AI developers in the music industry are set to gain €4bn - up from €0.1bn in 2023. These figures come from the first global economic study examining the impact of AI on human creativity, courtesy of the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC). Many artists are struggling to find fair remuneration in this new digital ecosystem, and have been speaking out against the existential threat AI poses. From Nick Cave to Paul McCartney, via Elton John, Radiohead, Dua Lipa, Kate Bush and Robbie Williams – all have called on the UK government to change copyright laws amid the threat of AI. So far, no luck. Parting words to the band and its overlords To The Velvet Sundown – and by extension Spotify - from a 'so-called journalist': Your aesthetically soulless 'synthetic music project' is a prime example of autocratic tech bros seeking to reduce human creation to algorithms designed to eradicate art. It highlights the artistically barren desire to generate more money, as well as the hypocrisy of Spotify CEO Daniel Ek - who once said the platform "does not download, create or upload any content, whether generated by artificial intelligence or otherwise." Provocations are all well and good; but when they're done at a time when artists are expressing real, legitimate concerns over the ubiquity of AI in a tech-dominated world and the use of their content in the training of AI tools, the stunt comes off as tone-deaf. Worse, morally shameless. None of this means that AI can't be used by those who wish to utilise it as a tool – provided that the use is signaled, thereby allowing listeners to make informed decisions, protect their online information, and lessen their already-prevalent fears of losing control of AI. Or, to put it a way that The Velvet Sundown would understand: regulatory measures need to be put in place so that "voices of reason AREN'T lost in our heads". Take people for morons that just consume stuff by minimizing the unquantifiable beauty of human expression, and you'll find yourself justly haemorrhaging subscribers. The only thing that The Velvet Sundown experiment has achieved, sadly, is disproving the words of 'Don Quixote' writer Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, who wrote: 'Where there's music there can be no evil.'
Metro
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Mystery over rock band 'that doesn't exist' with over 600,000 streams
A mysterious new band is climbing the charts on Spotify, racking up over half a million listens in just a few days. The Velvet Sundown sound familiar, and their songs are perfectly listenable, if not the next Sweet Jane. But they're causing controversy because people think they're entirely AI-generated, and you can see why. They either don't exist at all, or they're pretending to be AI for a marketing gimmick. According to their 'verified artist' Spotify profile, the band was 'formed by singer and mellotron player Gabe Farrow, guitarist Lennie West, Milo Rains, who crafts the band's textured synth sounds, and free-spirited percussionist Orion 'Rio' Del Mar'. Only problem is, none of them have any social media presence or evidence of existing outside of this bio, and the band itself only started posting on X and Instragram three days ago. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Not quite what you'd expect if they'd been gigging and promoting themselves for years before their big break. Their official Instagram account references the controversy with a video captioned: 'They said we're not real. Maybe you aren't either.' Equally enigmatically, their bio reads: 'A band you might have heard once in a dream. This one has only just begun.' But their online presence is even odder than this, as there are several different accounts claiming to be them on both X and Instagram, one of which has been very outspoken insisting they are not AI. They wrote: 'This is not a joke. This is our music, written in long, sweaty nights in a cramped bungalow in California with real instruments, real minds, and real soul. Every chord, every lyric, every mistake — HUMAN.' But the plot thickens, as a different Velvet Sundown account on X (the one linked to in the band's Spotify profile) indicated the first account wasn't even them at all. They wrote: 'To all the journalists who wrote about us — Thank you for listening. However, these are the only official pages of the band. All others are reflections, echoes, projections. Don't amplify what isn't us.' The possibly fake X account has more followers than the official X account, and also started posting first, so you can see why people are getting confused about all of this. 🚨 Absolutely crazy that so-called 'journalists' keep pushing the lazy, baseless theory that The Velvet Sundown is 'AI-generated' with zero evidence. Not a single one of these "writers" has reached out, visited a show, or listened beyond the Spotify algorithm. 1/ — The Velvet Sundown (Band) – Official 🎸🎶🎧 (@Velvet_Sundown) June 29, 2025 We asked to speak to the people behind the (fake?) X account and they agreed to talk, but did not yet reply when we asked if it could be a video call. The band also has at least five Instagram accounts, one of which is filled with what looks like AI generated images. These images are part of the reason the band has been accused of being fake, with oddities in the images like fudged fingers or a guitar with disappearing strings. But again, the band now say this is not their official account, which has only one promo video on the grid. Deezer, a rival music streaming service, has tagged the Velvet Sundown's music as being AI generated. This had nothing to do with the images or promotion surrounding them, but was down to analysis of the music itself. Aurelien Herault, Chief Innovation Officer at Deezer, told Metro: We have trained our detection tool using datasets from a number of generative models, including Suno and Udio, which means that our detection tool is able to recognise the signals and sounds in fully AI-generated music that you don't find in authentic tracks. 'We have also made significant progress in training our detection tool to identify AI tracks even without a specific dataset to train on. 'Thanks to our tool, we are confident that the album pages that are currently tagged generated by AI on our platform are generated by AI.' Their software flagged The Velvet Sundown as being AI before the contoversy erupted, and so a label is now shown to users warning 'AI generated content. Some tracks on this album may have been created using artificial intelligence.' It's growing, and Deezer say they now see 20,000 tracks which are 100% AI generated submitted every single day, which has doubled from the start of the year. Mr Herault told Metro that artifically generated music now makes up approximately 18% of all tracks delivered to the platform. He said: 'At Deezer we want to prioritise revenues going to real artists, which is why we remove fully AI-generated tracks from algorithmic or editorial recommendations. 'We don't believe AI music is inherently good or bad, but we believe music fans have a right to know what they are listening to, which is why we opt for a transparent approach and tag AI-generated music on Deezer, in order to build trust with our users.' As the tech continues to improve, we will no doubt get tracks which sound great and are made by AI, at the same time as becomes more integrated in filmmaking and yes, maybe takes your white collar job. Spotify has been investing heavily in AI, and you can now use it to make you playlists or listen to a DJ curating songs for you. But it has also been accused of adding AI generated music to popular playlists like Ambient Chill and Peaceful Piano, without it being obvious to users. The company has not commented on this, but previously said it was 'categorically untrue' that it was creating AI music itself to fill playlists. Instagram has introduced a tag to show if something is made using AI, and videos made by Google Veo are watermarked. However, the industry standard is less clear when it comes to AI music, with Deezer currently the only streaming platform to tag it as such. One way scammers might benefit from uploading AI music to streaming platforms is by getting enough streams to earn them royalties. There are even so-called 'streaming farms' where tracks are listened to over and over again to try and game the system. So a song could be made by AI and listened to by bots on repeat, with humans barely part of the musical process at all. It would be too obvious if an unknown artist suddenly racked up millions of streams (much like with the Velvet Sundown). So to get around this, fraudsters flood streaming platforms with lots of fake songs which are each streamed just a few thousands times: enough to make money, but less likely to make people suspicious. Explaining the problem, Mr Herault said: If an artist is able to gain a significant number of users streaming their music, they then become entitled to a bigger share of the royalty pool. More Trending 'This is true whether an artist is using AI or not; the only difference being that AI music is significantly easier to produce.' He said that fraudulent streams 'are often generated by streaming farms or bots, which repeatedly 'listen' to tracks in order to inflate their streams and increase their share of the royalty pool.' Deezer said that up to 70% of streams of fully AI tracks are fraudulent, though currently AI tracks only make up 0.5% of overall streams. The company said: 'When detecting stream manipulation of any kind, Deezer excludes the streams from the royalty payments.' Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: Legendary 70s rock band tease reunion tour after retiring over frontman's serious injury MORE: Rock star shares hospital bed update after 'very aggressive' cancer diagnosis MORE: I worked at Wimbledon for 40 years — now a machine has taken my job
San Francisco Chronicle
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
The Velvet Sundown, a suspected AI band, tops 550,000 listeners on Spotify in under a month
In a little less than a month, a band calling itself the Velvet Sundown has amassed more than 550,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. With two albums — 'Floating On Echoes' and 'Dust and Silence' — released in rapid succession in June, the group's sudden rise has been as mystifying as their digital footprint is sparse. The group's bio is drenched in dreamlike metaphor, introducing its members as 'vocalist and mellotron sorcerer Gabe Farrow,' guitarist Lennie West, bassist-synth alchemist Milo Rains and percussionist Orion 'Rio' Del Mar. But no trace of these supposed musicians exists online, not even a modest trail of interviews, performances or social media activity. That is, until an Instagram account surfaced on Friday, June 27, bearing images critics have called 'eerily AI-generated.' View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Velvet Sundown (@thevelvetsundownband) Skeptics have raised red flags across Reddit and music journalism circles. On Spotify, all songwriting and production credits go solely to the band, a rare practice in today's collaborative industry. There is no producer. There are no tour dates. There is no record label. Even a quote in their bio — 'they sound like the memory of something you never lived, and somehow make it feel real' — allegedly from Billboard is nowhere to be found in the publication's archives. 'The Velvet Sundown aren't trying to revive the past,' the band's 'verified artist' profile reads on Spotify. 'They're rewriting it. They sound like the memory of a time that never actually happened.' Photos of the band are bathed in amber light and have an almost airbrushed, artificial quality. But what stands out even more is the vacant, lifeless expression on each musician's face. One long-haired member holding an acoustic guitar — resembling a blend of singer Noah Kahan and 'Queer Eye' star Jonathan Van Ness — is especially uncanny: too flawless, too serene, more like a stock photo than a real person. Meanwhile, Deezer, a music streaming service that flags content it suspects is AI-generated, notes on the Velvet Sundown's profile on its site that 'some tracks on this album may have been created using artificial intelligence.' The group has reportedly been featured on more than 30 anonymous user playlists and recommended by Spotify's Discover Weekly algorithm, raising concerns about transparency and artist authenticity.
