A seemingly AI-generated band has racked up thousands of monthly Spotify listeners.
Despite having formed less than a month ago, the Velvet Sundown have over 400,000 monthly listeners on the streaming platform right now.
The psych-rock group currently have two albums on their Spotify-verified profile: ‘Floating On Echoes’, released on June 5, and ‘Dust and Silence’, which came out on June 20.
Per their artist bio, they’re a “four-piece” comprised of “vocalist and mellotron sorcerer Gabe Farrow, guitarist Lennie West, bassist-synth alchemist Milo Rains, and free-spirited percussionist Orion ‘Rio’ Del Mar”, and make “cinematic alt-pop and dreamy analogue soul.”
Questions surrounding Velvet Sundown’s legitimacy came after Reddit users who had come across the band in their Discover Weekly playlists began digging, finding little background information on them outside of their Spotify profiles.
Then, on Friday, (June 27), further speculation emerged after the band created an Instagram account, which features images of them that Redditors have said look eerily AI-generated.
apparently this band has only existed for 2 weeks and it’s all AI. how long until you see someone wearing their merch lol pic.twitter.com/5F7d3bq8RG
— gaz (@SilentGarrett) June 26, 2025
The band’s bio also includes a quote from Billboard, saying their music sounds like “the memory of something you never lived, and somehow make it feel real,” though the publication has never actually published this.
Spotify allows AI-generated music and doesn’t require disclosure that the technology has been used.
The band’s music is available on other streaming platforms too, including Apple Music and Deezer – the latter of which has been developing technology to identify and publicly tag AI-generated music.
On The Velvet Sundown’s profile, a description from Deezer says that “some tracks on this album may have been created using artificial intelligence.”
It comes during a period of controversy for AI technology in the music industry, with a recent study sharing the stark warning that people working in music are likely to lose a quarter of their income to Artificial Intelligence over the next four years.
This prediction comes as the annual market for generative AI is currently €3billion, and is expected to rise to €64billion by 2028.
Deezer also reported that around 10,000 AI-generated tracks are submitted to the platform daily – making up around 10 per cent of all its music uploads.
Last summer, Nick Cave warned of the dangers of the rise of AI in music, saying that its usage within the industry is “unbelievably disturbing” and will have a “humiliating effect” on creatives
Meanwhile, Elton John, Coldplay, Dua Lipa, Paul McCartney, Florence Welch, Kate Bush and Robbie Williams are among those who this year called on the UK government to change copyright laws amid the threat from AI.
Elsewhere, ABBA‘s Björn Ulvaeus has revealed he is writing a new musical using AI, which he believes is “such a great tool”.
