After weeks of rumors, the creators behind The Velvet Sundown have finally revealed the truth. The buzzy ’60s-inspired rock group with over a million monthly Spotify listeners isn’t a real band at all.
From the haunting vocals to the vintage press photos, everything — and everyone — was generated by artificial intelligence.
A mysterious rise on Spotify
One click on their Spotify profile shows how fast the band took off. In just one month, The Velvet Sundown amassed 1,230,815 monthly listeners.
The most popular track from their June 5 album “Floating on Echoes” has over 1.3 million plays. Their AI-generated group photo and dreamy album art sparked widespread debate.
However, there were no interviews and no way to contact the band — raising even more questions.
Fans speculated — and some defended them
Threads on X and Reddit filled with users trading theories and even defending the band’s artistry.
Rick Beato, a music producer with more than 5 million YouTube subscribers, posted a video on June 30 breaking down tracks from the album. He suspected it was AI-generated.
“As far as I know, [AI] is trained on very low-quality MP3s where they feed in the entire mix, so it can’t actually separate out the parts,” Beato said. “They need multitracks so they can hear the voices and things like that.”
The band breaks its silence
On July 5, The Velvet Sundown posted a statement on X admitting the truth: they’re a “synthetic music project guided by human direction.”
“All characters, stories, music, voices and lyrics are original creations generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools employed as creative instruments,” the statement said.
They closed with, “Not quite human. Not quite machine. The Velvet Sundown lives somewhere in between.” Their Spotify bio has since been updated to confirm the “support of artificial intelligence.”
The band also claims people have already tried to impersonate them. On July 3, they posted another statement, disavowing a person named “Andrew Frelon” who was allegedly giving interviews on the band’s behalf.
“We have no affiliation with this individual, nor any evidence confirming their identity or existence.”
AI in music is not an isolated case
This isn’t the only AI deception drawing attention.
SAN recently covered an Australian radio station, CADA, which revealed it had been airing an AI host for months without telling listeners. The voice behind “Workdays with Thy,” a four-hour midday show launched in November 2024, wasn’t real. The show was curated by CADA’s music team to spotlight trending tracks in hip hop, R&B and pop.
In another corner of music innovation, British electronic artist ILĀ teamed up with AI startup MOTH to create the first commercial song using quantum computing.
The track, “Recurse,” was built by training a generative AI system on ILĀ’s original melody. That output was then refined with help from a quantum computer provided by Finnish tech company IQM.
“I created a piece of music in the way that I normally would, and then those patterns were used by MOTH to train this generative system,” ILĀ said in a video with MOTH.
Timbaland and Suno team up
While “Recurse” used quantum computing, software like Suno creates entire songs — lyrics, vocals and production — from a simple text prompt.
Producer Timbaland partnered with Suno in October 2024 after using it himself for months. He’s now helping shape the software to be more artist-friendly.
Last month, he launched StageZero, a startup powered by Suno that creates fully AI-generated virtual artists. Its first artist, TaTa, will debut a track created through a blend of human and AI input.
“She is not an avatar. She is not a character. TaTa is a living, learning, autonomous music artist built with AI,” Timbaland said according to Music Business Worldwide. “TaTa is the start of something bigger. A‑Pop is the next cultural evolution, and TaTa is its first icon.”
Backlash over AI artistry
Not everyone is on board with the rise of AI artists.
One Instagram user commented on TaTa’s debut saying, “Hiii I have pink hair, I’m [mixed Asian and white,] and I also make music AND I’m a human!!!”
Others echoed concerns about creativity and originality.
“Taking the humanity out of art is soulless,” one wrote in another comment.
“Yes, let’s make it even harder for the humans,” another added.
The public is divided
A Pew Research study from February found 52% of American workers are concerned about AI’s impact on jobs. About 30% believe it will reduce their long-term job prospects.
Still, 29% say they feel excited about AI’s future in the workplace.
Is AI hiding in plain sight on streaming platforms?
One Reddit user, u/byConin, said they believe AI-made music is already filling platforms like Spotify — under generic pseudonyms.
They found songs that sounded “strangely familiar” from artists with names like “FirstName LastName,” no social media, and identical formatting: 10 songs, each about a minute long, and only one album uploaded.
“They also were nowhere else, not YouTube or Apple Music, nowhere,” the user noted.
“Audiences like to know when something is AI-generated,” Aileen Gallagher, a journalism professor at Syracuse University, told Straight Arrow News. “Disclosure rules are really important to build audience trust.”
She added that people find AI content disingenuous — especially when it pretends to be real.
The future of AI and creative work
Tech journalist Peter Griffin told the New Zealand Herald that we’ll keep seeing more of this “AI slop” as generative tools evolve.
Gallagher, meanwhile, urges her journalism students to think bigger about their role in a world filled with machine-made content.
“If generative AI is doing the work for you, then what are we all doing here?” she asked.
That question, she says, doesn’t just apply to journalism — but to all work in the age of AI.
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Author: Ally Heath
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