The Velvet Sundown: This band blowing up on Spotify is 100% AI-generated • FRANCE 24 English

The Velvet Sundown: This band blowing up on Spotify is 100% AI-generated • FRANCE 24 English

Truth or fake means. Verica Bell over by the bit boy. Verica, good evening to you. Um, a new album by the band Velvet Sundown. Uh, released today. They’re a 70s rock flavor band blowing up with over a million streams online. Um, catch is they’re they’re not real, are they? They’re fake. Or is it true? Well, Mark, seeing as this is a musical story, I thought we should start first and foremost with the music. So, let’s take a listen. Dust on the wind, boots on the ground, smoke. You might think at home that this sounds pretty good. Um, it’s a song that’s been blowing up on streaming services. But if you’ve been listening to it, you have been listening to a 100% AI generated band. That is from the music, the lyrics, the voices, uh, the backstory, the promotional images. This is entirely AI generated syn synthetic content. This is a uh a band called the Velvet Sundown. They have amassed 1.3 monthly listeners on Spotify. And with its 70s folk rock flavor, uh this band has taken off literally in a matter of weeks, and I do mean weeks because if we look at the band’s discoraphy on Spotify, this is their first album, Floating on Echo. This was released on June 4th. Literally two weeks later, the third album came out, Dustin Silence, that came out on 19th of June. And then the third album, uh, Paper Sun Rebellion. Well, that has been released literally today. We are the 14th of July. So, very productive, shall we say. Now, according to the group, it is made up of, uh, the melatron player Gabe Faroh, guitarist Lenny West, we have Milo Reigns on the keyboard, and percussionist Orion Delmare. So, Mark, that is the musical talent behind the group. people. So, it would be if they existed. So, you’re telling us that none of these musicians, the voices we’ve heard, everything, none of it actually exists. No, they don’t exist, Mark. And I think that is exactly how the band got caught out. Because if you Google the names that I gave you earlier, there’s no uh online link or evidence suggesting that any of those band members are real people. And that’s when the rumor mill began to swell because uh Reddit users, music journalists, they tried to look up the band for backstory, for interviews, uh live performances, anything really after their playlist became flooded with the Velvet Sundown. And this became even more in doubt when uh the band posted pictures on their Instagram. And there’s a lot of telltale signs here of AI. We can see that giveaway of AI struggling to make hands, too many fingers. We have a cable that melts into the singer’s arm. We have errors here with the guitar. The the chords don’t line up and the strings. Um, and this story really only gets crazier from here because based on all of this online attention, this tweet began to gain traction by someone claiming to be the Velvet Sundowns representative. Now, this person slammed journalists for uh misjudging the band as fake or as AI. And they also claimed that this is not a joke. Every chord, every lyric, every mistake is human. Um, and this person who ran this account, this person who made those tweets there, then gave an interview to Rolling Stone, uh, calling himself Andrew Andrew Freeman, Freeland, sorry, the spokesperson. Um, and this Andrew Frell revealed to Rolling Stone magazine that the Velvet Sundown is created by AI, the AI music generator named Suno. And he told Rolling Stone, “This is all an art hoax.” Now, this is where the story gets even crazier because it turns out that this Andrew Freeland is also a hoax because the real fake AI band then issued a statement online uh on their official social media that they made clear was them and they said that someone is attempting to hijack the identity and they have no link to this Andrew Freeland person. So, essentially they’re saying if someone’s going to say that we’re AI, we are. Now, the guy behind that fake uh hoax, Andrew Freeland, then posted an article on Medium uh explaining why he posted this prank, why he got involved. He said the rumor mill was running and turning and he wanted to expose the media, he said, by adding a layer of confusion to the mix, Mark. So, to get this straight then, somebody pretending to represent them exposed the band as synthetic and that turned out to be a hoax. But whoever is behind it, it’s still AI. Yes, I know it is confusing, but someone else exposing the band as AI seemed to be what really pushed the real fake band, the real fake creators of the Velvet Sundown to come clean. The band posted their official social media uh and to to clear up that this is the only one that they have, so no one else could claim it. And this is what they posted. They said we are not quite human, not quite machines, somewhere in between, but confirming that they are a synthetic music uh project. Uh and that it is designed to challenge the boundaries of authorship, identity, and the future of music itself in the age of AI. That said, we still don’t know who is behind who is the real creators uh creating this generating, should I say, this AI music behind this velvet sundown band. It is unclear if they will face consequences about the streaming revenue that they’re collecting from streaming services. Now, this entire saga has sparked calls for streaming services to clearly label uh AI generated content so listeners know exactly what they’re listening to. A spokesperson for the Guardian uh has said that uh Spotify doesn’t prioritize prioritize any AI generated music and that all music included that that’s AI generated is created, owned, and uploaded by licensed third parties. But Mark, there you have it. It is a fake ban that we knew. There is a bit of a saga there, but we’ll have to wait and watch to see if there’s any consequences for the streaming services. But, you know, we have to stay vigilant as always. Indeed. And if there is money being made, we can obviously be sure that that won’t be fake money, will it? Vetica, thank you very much indeed. Vetica, there with truth or fake and uh velvet velvet sundown. There we go.

It’s a rock ‘n’ roll band with over 1 million monthly listeners, with three albums out in barely six weeks. But despite shooting to Spotify’s top ranks, The Velvet Sundown’s music is entirely AI-generated – and it had quite a saga being revealed as synthetic. Vedika Bahl gives us the deep dive into the band’s mysterious origins in this edition of Truth or Fake.
#thevelvetsundown #spotify #AImusic

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