There's a band with more than half a million monthly listeners on Spotify and they probably don't exist

It's a sudden rise to fame, by any standards.

Two weeks ago, breezy psychedelic rockers The Velvet Sundown didn't exist. And now they've released two albums and collected more than half a million monthly listeners on Spotify.

It's almost too good to be true, and it probably isn't. All the evidence (or lack, thereof) points to The Velvet Sundown being an AI-generated outfit. There's no discernible real-world footprint, and plenty to suggest that they're a figment of someone's digital imagination.

All the images shared by the "band" on social media bear the hallmarks of AI: the hyperrealistic colours, the improbable shadows. And the band's music bears the sonic hallmarks of Suno, the music creation app that allows users to generate up to 500 songs a month for just $8: the thin, unimaginative percussion, the fact that the vocalist sounds slightly different on each song.

"There’s something quietly spellbinding about The Velvet Sundown," claims the band's Spotify bio. "You don’t just listen to them, you drift into them. Their music doesn’t shout for your attention; it seeps in slowly, like a scent that suddenly takes you back somewhere you didn’t expect.

"Their sound mixes textures of '70s psychedelic alt-rock and folk rock, yet it blends effortlessly with modern alt-pop and indie structures. Shimmering tremolos, warm tape reverbs, and the gentle swirl of organs give everything a sense of history without it ever feeling forced."

The bio goes on to say that the band was formed by singer and mellotron player Gabe Farrow, guitarist Lennie West, keyboardist Milo Rains, and drummer Orion "Rio" Del Mar, four musicians who only appear to exist within the context of the band.

So what's going on? The Velvet Sundown have already made their way onto some prominent Spotify playlists, prompting allegations that the company is padding playlists with “ghost artists” to decrease royalty payouts to the real ones. It's also possible that The Velvet Sundown's listener spikes are due to bots (Spotify take steps to prevent this), a scenario in which fake listeners listen to fake music and who knows what to believe anymore.

More likely, given the emergence of a band Instagram account which features a growing number of obviously AI-generated photos – including images spoofing the covers of Abbey Road and Queen II – is that The Velvet Sundown's "creator" can't believe the success of the project and is milking it for all it's worth, delighted at all the column inches the "band" have generated. And we've just joined the throng. Sorry.

Meanwhile, streaming platform Deezer, which has flagged The Velvet Sundown's music as possibly being "created using artificial intelligence", reports that nearly 20% of music uploaded to their platform has been artificially created, a number that's nearly doubled in three months.

It's only going to get worse.

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