‘The Velvet Sundown’ and AI Music: What People Are Getting Wrong This Week

Have you heard of the sunset in velvet? Me neither. But the independent rock group has warmed the list of Spotify this week, with nearly 600,000 monthly listeners who probably block the group’s lameness, Country Rock Glurge. Only one song, “Dust on the Wind” (not a Kansas song cover “Dust in the Wind”), has more than 500,000 pieces on the most popular streaming service in the world.

So the group’s career explodes, as children said. But the sunset in velvet does not really seem exist. All the signs suggest that everything credited to the group is entirely generated by AI: music, group photos, album covers. All this is created by computers.

(Once this article was published for the first time, I received an email from “The creators of the Sundown of the Velvet”. According to them, the group is “a multidisciplinary artistic project mixing music, analog aesthetics and speculative narration”, which seems to be a longer and more boring way to say, “it’s AI.”)

The story of the false group was covered by PC Gamer, our friends at Mashable, Tech Radar and countless other sources. But the sunset in velvet is not alone. They are part of an army of eminent false musicians on music streaming services, and they are not even the most successful.

How to know if a group exists

It is not possible to determine without fail If the music was made by computers simply by listening to it, so the best you can do is speculate, but I strongly Suppose that Velvet Sundown’s music is generated by AI.

Exhibition one: music

Their music is so tirelessly poor, so devoid of personality, that it could not came from humans. Everything, from lyrics to the structures of the song to instrumentation, is the peak plate. It is not even a good AI incentive. It is not that the music of the Sundown Velvet is bad; it is not Nothing. There is a difference between the sound of an electric guitar and a wave of its manufactured by digital fusion, combination and imitation of noise of countless other electric guitars. It is difficult to describe the difference, exactly, but that’s it.

(For what is worth, the AI ​​detection tool of French music music Deezer said that Velvet Sundown music is “content generated by AI”.)

Piece two: the photo

Credit: TVS_MUSIC / X

The photo above is on the header of the X account associated with sunset in velvet. Although there are no additional visible fingers or other telltale signs “they are” feel Ai. Like music, it is difficult to explain the difference between a human face and a fusion of millions of human faces, and it is difficult to explain death in the eyes of the “people” of AI, but that is. More revealing, however, it is one of the only two images of the group that I can find online. How many guys in groups do you know who don’t do it Like being photographed?

Piece three: the context

Until an X account was created this week, all the online presence of the Velvet Sundown included some songs on streaming services. No website, no tiktok, no Instagram, no soundcloud, no fans forum, no upcoming concerts, no Nothing. It is simply not how real groups do things in 2025, where an online existence is expected. Only false groups suddenly appear on streaming services, especially groups polite enough to be as mediocre as sunset in velvet. According to the spotify bio, the members of the Velvet Sunset are Gabe Farrow, Lennie West, Milo Raines and Orion “Rio” del Mar. I find no evidence that these people have played with other groups, or existing.

Piece four: the law of medium -sized

Spotify does not announce to what extent the music on its service is manufactured by AI, but at this stage, I suppose that the answer is “most”. It is so much easier to create a piece of music generated by AI than to do yours. To be in a real group, you have to spend years practicing music, then find other people who want to play music with you, rent a studio, write the song, etc. years To go to nothing to “here is my first song”. It took Leonard Cohen for five years to record “Hallelujah”. It took me eight minutes (I timed it) to use Claude.ai and Suno to create a ready country ready for the radio “Waiting to Die”.

Struggling with the musical invasion of the AI

The velvet sunset is not alone. There is whole genres Online music that sounds as they were made by machines. Velvets (as real fans call them) are not even the most successful group of false on Spotify – listen to the jazz reading list for the study. The first “artist” listed “, The Super Smart Trio, has no online presence outside the musical streaming services, published a total of 12 songs, and yet his greatest success,” factor “, was played more than three million times. Or the” Tate Jackson Trio “. have never played a show. Really strong.

Why you should worry about the music ia

If anyone appreciates “dust on the wind” while he studies or plans a kneever frenzy, what difference does it make so oron “rio” del mar (the wacky) is really false? There is no need to shake your fist with a thunderstorm; Taking control of all that is good and human is eventNo matter what you or I feel. But (as illustrated by my Country Hip-Hop masterpiece “Waiting To Die”), we do not have forever in this life, and I would like to choose If you participate or not in artistic experiences generated by AI-AI. When I managed to play on a song, I enter a tacit agreement that somewhere, in a way, a human being sat down and I tried to express something with music. That’s why I as music.

In the 1970s, when Kraftwerk imagined the music generated by the machine of the future, at least it was cool: robotics, precise, cold, hypnotic and undeniably futuristic. The music of the Spotify flooding today is not visionary, it is just mediocre music that imitates human made by computers who were essentially qualified be boring. Can we just get a deactivation button? All of me so crazy that I had written a punk pop punk song on this subject.