On Spotify, the unexpected success of The Velvet Sundown, a mysterious AI-generated “band”

Indie rock vibes, two albums in less than a month, and several million streams on Spotify: this is the lightning-fast success of The Velvet Sundown, who, after attracting the suspicion of listeners, finally confirmed that their tracks were generated by artificial intelligence (AI). On the music streaming platform, the group now defines itself as " a synthetic music project guided by human artistic direction ." " Not quite human. Not quite machine. The Velvet Sundown lives somewhere in between ," adds the X account.

The suspense was thin. Many listeners had guessed, long before the "band" admitted it, that this was artificial music: a frenetic release schedule, minimal online presence, and, above all, the systematic use of generative AI for all the lyrics and illustrations. " All of the band's images scream Midjourney ," wrote Vice magazine on July 2. The streaming platform Deezer had already warned, on the band's page, that " some tracks on this album may have been created using artificial intelligence ."

In fact, according to several specialist sites , The Velvet Sundown's tracks appear to have been generated by Suno's AI. By being included in Spotify's popular playlists, they were apparently boosted by the app's algorithm and presented to many listeners.

Ironically, it was because other people—real humans this time—were impersonating them that The Velvet Sundown finally acknowledged its synthetic origins. On June 29, when the “band” had virtually no social media presence, an X account in its name appeared and posted a thread: “ It’s absolutely insane that so-called journalists continue to promote the lazy and baseless theory that The Velvet Sundown is AI-generated, without any evidence. ” Profile X then multiplied the messages, systematically repeating that the band had never used AI.

At the same time, another account was created on the same social network. Affiliated with the band's Spotify account, it claimed that the first one was a fake. Too late: the first profile already had much more visibility and several media outlets, including the Washington Post , Vanity Fair and The Observer , contacted the owner. On July 2, Rolling Stone magazine published an interview with a person identifying himself under the pseudonym Andrew Frelon, who was said to be a " spokesperson for the viral AI-generated band ." " It's marketing, it's trolling. Before, people didn't care what we were doing and now we're talking to Rolling Stone " he explains. In the French-speaking press, the information is notably picked up by RTBF .

The next day, Andrew Frelon announced that he was an imposter . He explained that he had chosen his name in reference to " an annoying insect, which seemed like a suitable mascot" and said that he had been intrigued by The Velvet Sundown after failing to create a similar project a year earlier.

Unlike "Andrew Frelon," the X account associated with the "band's" Spotify profile never seems to have really challenged the accusations of AI use. As early as September ¹ , it quipped, " They're accusing us of not being real. Maybe you're not either, " while announcing the upcoming release of their third album. The media frenzy certainly doesn't seem to have bothered its creator(s), whose identity remains unknown: on July 9, The Velvet Sundown released their latest single, Reflections in the Glass Hour.