AI band fools millions – so why is Spotify peddling their ‘music’?,
If you’ve come across indie band ‘The Velvet Sundown’ on Spotify recently you’ll likely have noticed their easy-listening, retro rock sound.
Promotional images appear to show the four young men who make up the band, with long flowing hair and moody expressions.
Other images on their social media accounts show them recreating poses of some classic artists, including The Beatles and Queen.
But if something seems a little strange to you about The Velvet Sundown – which has more than one million monthly listeners and counting – you’re not wrong.
They’re an entirely fictional band, an online hoax with AI-generated songs, lyrics, artwork and promo images.
Whoever is behind the ‘band’ has admitted on socials that it is a ‘synthetic music project’ made ‘with the support of artificial intelligence’.
The admission has fueled controversy surrounding the project, with commentators asking why Spotify is allowing AI music disguised as the real thing.
One Reddit user said: ‘Spotify needs to add a filter so we don’t have to listen to this AI crap.’
Another Reddit user said: ‘This is absolutely gross. If Spotify and other streaming services actually had ethical codes they would be banning AI “artists” from being able to upload their songs onto their services.’
On The Velvet Sundown’s X account, the bio reads: ‘Not quite human. Not quite machine. The Velvet Sundown lives somewhere in between.’
A further statement posted on Saturday reads: ‘The Velvet Sundown is a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction, and composed, voiced, and visualized 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.’
It’s unclear why Spotify is hosting AI bands on its platform; MailOnline has contacted the Sweden-based tech giant for more information.
But Gina Neff, professor of responsible AI at Queen Mary University of London, thinks The Velvet Sundown helps fuel Spotify use much like any real band on the platform.
‘Spotify are a platform business, making money by connecting creators to consumers,’ she told MailOnline.
‘If their subscribers push for better gatekeeping [against AI music], Spotify will offer it.
‘Right now, music like all creative industries are changing quickly with AI, and fans feel like they can’t keep up.
‘The Velvet Sundown case teaches us that listeners really care about authenticity in music, and the industry should learn that lesson.’
Dr Adam Behr, senior lecturer in contemporary and popular music at Newcastle University, stressed that Spotify is first and foremost a ‘content company’, not a ‘music company’.
‘The nature of that content is secondary to their business model… think about their expansion into licensing deals and podcast production,’ he told MailOnline.
It’s unclear which AI tool has been used to create The Velvet Sundown’s ‘music’, but appears to be another example of ‘generative AI’.
This is where AI tools are fed artists’ songs to ‘learn’ their vocal styles and musical hallmarks before being able to generate brand new approximations, with new lyrics and melody.
This is perhaps why The Velvet Sundown’s songs sound so derivative, with shades of several classic rock acts spanning the last several decades, including AD/DC, The Eagles and the Foo Fighters.
One song called ‘End the Pain’ has a very retro sound with jangly Byrds-esque arpeggio guitars and vocals similar to Rod Stewart, with the lyrics: ‘We want peace, not parade/time to break the wall they made/smoke and fire fading fast/we were never meant to last.’
But it appears The Velvet Sundown is not the only fake artist on Spotify, which has more than 600 million users worldwide.
According to a report last year from The Week, Spotify is becoming inundated with unlicensed covers of songs generated by AI.
As well as undermining artistic integrity, AI music blurs the line between using a song protected by copyright and using a cheaper or copyright-free approximation.
In May this year, Paul McCartney and Elton John were among 400 creatives urging the UK government to force AI firms to reveal the copyrighted works used to train their models.
In their open letter addressed to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, they called creative copyright ‘the lifeblood of the creative industries’.
Under the Labour government’s proposals, AI would be allowed to train their models with copyrighted work without permission unless the owner opts out
‘We will lose an immense growth opportunity if we give our work away at the behest of a handful of powerful overseas tech companies and with it our future income,’ it read.
‘We urge His Majesty’s Government to accept the Lords Amendments in the name of Baroness Kidron that put transparency at the heart of the copyright regime.’
In February, Kate Bush and Damon Albarn were among the musicians credited for ‘Is This What We Want?’, a 47-minute album consisting of silence in protest at the use of of unlicensed copyrighted work to train AI.
Spotify: The Swedish streaming service that took the music world by storm
Founded as a small start-up firm 19 years ago, Spotify has quickly risen to take the music world by storm. From its humble beginnings, the music streaming service, which boasts a library of over 100million songs, now has a staggering 600 million monthly active users and is worth hundreds of billions of dollarsn.
The meteoric rise began in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2006. The company was co-founded by Daniel Ek, the former boss of popular fashion-based browser game Stardoll, and Martin Lorentzon, co-founder of digital marketing firm Tradedoubler.
The small start-up was set up as a response to the growing piracy problem the music industry was facing. It launched two years later with a free registration service for users to stream music via the internet.
This model allowed users a freemium service – allowing users to listen for free with adverts – or a paid subscription service.
It set Spotify aside from the rival Apple’s iTunes store, from which users bought digital copies of songs or albums to build their own library which they could listen to whenever they liked.
By 2009, the company had reached the UK. Its popularity surged after the release of its mobile service.
By March 2011, five years after it was founded and three years after its launch, Spotify had one million paying subscribers across Europe. Within six months, that number had doubled.
In the same year, Spotify launched in the US, again to great success. By 2012, the streaming service had 15million active users, four million being paying Spotify subscribers.
And subscription figures continued to grow and grow and grow, more than doubling by 2014. By 2016 it had 40million paying subscribers and 100million total users and as of October 2020, the platform has 320million monthly users, including 144 million paying subscribers.
But despite its meteoric growth, the company, which has an annual revenue of around $12billion, has historically faced criticism.
Critics including Taylor Swift have argued that the service does not compensate musicians fairly. The company distributes approximately 70 per cent of its total revenue to rights holders, mostly record labels, who then pay artists based on individual agreements.
In a bid to drive its profits into the green, the owners of Spotify, Spotify AB, was floated on the New York Stock Exchange as a publicly traded company in 2018.
The move came after the company made losses of nearly £870m over the previous three years.
In 2024, Spotify recorded record profits of more than €1bn (£860m).
