The Velvet Sundown, technically distinct from Velvet Sundown, has topped one million Spotify monthly listeners, a number of whom apparently reside in Australia.
A blitz of media coverage has now propelled The Velvet Sundown past one million Spotify monthly listeners. Meanwhile, an individual who claimed to represent the allegedly AI-powered “band” has admitted that he’s not actually involved with the project.
The first of those developments is front and center on the appropriate Spotify page. At the time of writing, The Velvet Sundown had a staggering 1.07 million monthly listeners and millions of cumulative plays across its 40 tracks.
As we’ve charted in detail, high-profile playlist placements set this consumption tidal wave in motion. And more recently, an avalanche of media coverage has been fueling a steady stream of listening (or at least playing).
Said media coverage certainly hasn’t come as a surprise. A seemingly AI “artist” – we previously explored the artificial-intelligence evidence, including the fact that the mentioned 40 tracks have all dropped in about one month – is making a material streaming splash with no interviews, history, or human members whatsoever.
That raises far-reaching questions about the future of on-demand listening. With no safeguards in place preventing AI uploads from competing with human creations, what’s stopping other Velvet Sundown situations? And how many AI “artists” are racking up streams as well as royalty payments at present?
Naturally, then, fans as well as outlets sought answers to these and adjacent questions. This road led to a Rolling Stone discussion with one Andrew Frelon, who purported to be a Velvet Sundown spokesperson. Long story short, the pseudonymous Frelon in a subsequent Medium post outed himself as “the guy running the fake Velvet Sundown Twitter account.”
Though an interesting twist, the disclosure isn’t exactly a grand revelation. Stated bluntly, there aren’t many obstacles preventing one from claiming to rep a virtual “band.” To be sure, we mentioned not just Frelon’s X account in our coverage last week, but another profile tied to Velvet Sundown.
Now, the latter is billing itself as the official account for Velvet Sundown and has been connected to the relevant Spotify profile.
“The Velvet Sundown is a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction, and composed, voiced, and visualized with the support of artificial intelligence,” reads one of the involved social posts.
“Not quite human. Not quite machine. The Velvet Sundown lives somewhere in between,” the text continues.
Like with the fake rep, this isn’t a grand revelation. But the situation is significant in that it represents the tip of the AI-music iceberg – with major implications for real artists who have fanbases to build and bills to pay.
(One iceberg aside: A separate AI-powered Velvet Sundown artist profile, which doesn’t feature “the” in its name, is likewise pumping out releases. Despite being distinct, the two “bands” have links besides their overlapping names. The Velvet Sundown’s newest single has an auto-assigned DistroKid label name, 9871648 Records DK, matching that tied to Velvet Sundown’s latest track. Perhaps Velvet Sunrise, Velvet Sunup, and Velvet Dawn are on the way.)
Bearing in mind the aforementioned fake Velvet Sundown rep, there appears to have been little or no digital-presence preparation at all for the “band.” (In fact, as was the case last week, the VelvetSundown.com domain still hasn’t found a buyer at $699.)
Is the “group” one piece of a larger scheme to generate massive royalty payments with AI? And how can we counteract the pernicious trend?
(Admittedly, many proper artists aren’t earning recording royalties from Spotify. But the far-from-ideal problem’s solution probably isn’t deflecting compensation and exposure from human acts in favor of AI.)
Separating AI outputs from human works before the former overwhelm DSPs is a good idea; Deezer is already taking steps in this direction by tagging AI uploads accordingly. More immediately, barring artificial intelligence music – and possibly all music – from capitalizing on an elaborate series of well-entrenched playlists is advisable.
While that’s easier said than done, booting AI tracks from Discover Weekly (where many say they first encountered Velvet Sundown) and other personalized listening experiences should be a no-brainer. Following the idea to its logical conclusion, human curators are far less likely to plug AI tracks, France’s Qobuz emphasized.
“Qobuz listeners are mainly listening to tracks and albums recommended by our human music curation team, meaning that ‘AI slop’ does not get any visibility on our platform,” the service said to DMN. “Furthermore, we remove all detected fraudulent streams from our reporting to preserve the industry leading artist payments for which Qobuz is known.”
Less eager to weigh in here is Spotify, which remains conspicuously silent about Velvet Sundown’s ascent.
Content shared from www.digitalmusicnews.com.