{"id":34560,"date":"2025-07-03T06:06:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T06:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/34560\/"},"modified":"2025-07-03T06:06:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T06:06:09","slug":"spokesman-for-the-velvet-sundown-admits-theyre-fake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/34560\/","title":{"rendered":"Spokesman for The Velvet Sundown admits they’re fake"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week, like everyone else, we clambered aboard the Velvet Sundown<\/a> bandwagon, telling the story of a band that had apparently come from nowhere to enjoy significant success on Spotify<\/a>, despite bearing all the hallmarks of AI-generated music<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To no one’s surprise, the fakery has now been confirmed. Band members Gabe Farrow, Lennie West, Milo Rains and Orion “Rio” Del Ma don’t exist, but spokesman Andrew Frelon (not his real name) does, and, in an interview with Rolling Stone<\/a>, he’s come clean.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s marketing,” Frelon says. “It\u2019s trolling. People before, they didn\u2019t care about what we did, and now suddenly, we\u2019re talking to Rolling Stone, so it\u2019s like, \u2018Is that wrong?”<\/p>\n

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“We live in a world now where things that are fake have sometimes even more impact than things that are real,” says Felon. “And that\u2019s messed up, but that\u2019s the reality that we face now. So it\u2019s like, \u2018Should we ignore that reality?<\/p>\n

“Should we ignore these things that kind of exist on a continuum of real versus fake or kind of a blend between the two? Or should we dive into it and just let it be the emerging native language of the internet?’\u201d<\/p>\n

Felon initially says that AI was only used to generate ideas for the project, and later claims that only some of the band’s songs (they’ve released two albums in two weeks) were generated using Suno, the music creation app that allows users to generate up to 500 songs a month for just $8.<\/p>\n

He also says that the band’s impressive monthly Spotify listener stats \u2013 they’re now at 750,000 \u2013 are not due to any activity on his part, nefarious or otherwise.<\/p>\n

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“I respect that people have really strong emotions about this,” Frelon adds. “But I think it\u2019s 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\u2019re using a program or not using a program.<\/p>\n

“People have this idea that you have to please everybody and you have to follow the rules. And that\u2019s not how music and culture progress. Music and culture progressed by people doing weird experiments and sometimes they work and sometimes they don\u2019t.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this week, like everyone else, we clambered aboard the Velvet Sundown bandwagon, telling the story of a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":34561,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[185,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-34560","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114787803717122749","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}