Rock band that topped Spotify charts reveal dark truth behind their rapid rise to fame
A rock band who soared to the top of Spotify's charts have revealed the truth about their rapid rise to fame in an update that has left plenty of people feeling unsettled.
If you haven't heard of The Velvet Sundown, they're a rock band who appeared almost out of nothing on Spotify, soon boasting a profile with over 1.2 million monthly listeners.
However, nobody had any record of any live performances, while none of the four named musicians in the band have ever given an interview or have their own social media profiles, which naturally led to accusations that their music was AI-generated.
Despite their profile picture featuring the yellow tint that seemingly appears in every AI photo these days, they continued to deny these allegations, with an interview from band 'spokesperson' Andrew Frelon with The Rolling Stone also proving to be a hoax.
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The gig, or lack of gigs, was well and truly up though and now the band have admitted on their own profiles that they don't really exist, and that much of their music was AI-generated.
With lyrics like: "Dust on the wind, boots on the ground, smoke in the sky, no peace found", who would have guessed?
Posting online, the band wrote: "The Velvet Sundown is a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction, and composed, voiced, and visualised with the support of artificial intelligence.
"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.
"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.
"Not quite human. Not quite machine. The Velvet Sundown lives somewhere in between."
It perhaps doesn't come as a surprise to most people, given that the band are producing albums at an inhuman rate, with two in June and another scheduled for mid-July.
It just goes to show how far AI has come in the last few years, and it's pretty scary that the band were able to gain so much popularity with a large portion of their listeners seemingly unaware that they weren't real.
Spotify's CEO Daniel Ek clarified earlier this year that while AI tools such as auto-tune are allowed, AI-generated music that impersonates artists is strictly prohibited, so this may well be the last we hear of The Velvet Sundown.
For those of you who still like the band and or want to listen, their third album is set to arrive on 14 July.
Topics: Spotify, Artificial Intelligence, Music
James Moorhouse