The Velvet Sundown is the first viral band built totally based on artificial intelligence. Your success, considerable. At least, that’s what it seems. Although it was very clear from the beginning, it has not been until now when the fictional nature of the band has been officially revealed. Is it the predict of the future that awaits us?
After appearing at the beginning of June with her first “studio” album, the band quickly attracted public attention for its impressive numbers, and for its artificial aura. Around this time, The Velvet Sundown had 300,000 monthly listeners in Spotify. Upon entering the page, the first thing that attracted attention was the cover photography of the band and its suspicious retro filter, typical of the images generated by AI.
His two albums, ‘Dust and Silence’ and ‘Floating on Echoes’, are released 15 days apart and two practically identical covers. What they transmit is pure laziness. In addition to the name, being a bad plagiarism of The Velvet underground that I really hope is also generated by AI, the most suspicious is his group biography. “Not only do you listen to them, but you let yourself be carried away by them” or “There are no singles, only songs that look like intimate conversations with yourself,” are some of the claims of the sound of The Velvet Slown.
These describe their music as a fusion of “the psychedelic textures of the 70s with alternative cinematographic and analog and dreamlike soul.” Actually, its sound looks more like a chicken breast without seasoning. Imagine the most generic rock you can and take off any vestige of soul you may have. They could strain like a real group if you are someone who has never heard music or if you have a non -existent standard.
Now, then why do so many monthly listeners have? No one knows it, really. After the news came out that a clearly false group had managed to knead so many “fans,” their numbers doubled. On the other hand, in social networks they barely reach 1000 followers. Today, while I write this, they have 850,000 monthly listeners on the Swedish platform. I am sure that no one listens to their music, and that all these data are the product of the pure morbidity of being a fictitious band. It is also possible that a large percentage of listeners are bots. If the real artists use them, why not the AI?
Spotify also has explanations to give. For some reason, The Velvet Sundown is present in two great playlists, being the most popular of these a music based on the Vietnam War. I also don’t know what a group like this paints on that list, beyond the pregnant letters on peace that promote in their greatest hit, ‘dust on the wind’: «The rivers become red / the drums are slow / tell me, brother, where we are going».
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqj9iwoclhk
After weeks of unknowns, Rolling Stone has published an interview with who claims to be a “attached” spokesman for the band, Andrew Frelon. A few days ago, The Velvet Sundown fervently denied being a fictitious band: “This is our music, written in long and sweaty nochas in a tight Bungaló de California with real instruments, real minds and a real soul,” they published in a surrealist way in X. Frelon has only denied the greatest obviousness: “It is marketing.” It is a trolley. Before people didn’t care what we were doing and now we are talking to Rolling Stone. What’s wrong? ”He said.
After admitting that music is created from the generative AI of Suno, Frelon admits that he is interested in “artistic scams”: “We live in a world in which false things sometimes have more impact than real. He is screwed, but it is the reality we face, ”he says. Today, The Biography of The Velvet Slown is entirely dedicated to disconnecting everything Andrew Frelon has told in the American environment: “We have no affiliation with this individual, nor evidences that confirm his identity or existence.”
Who is behind The Velvet Sundown? Andrew Frelon is also ia? These are questions that are not so interesting as to be answered. However, from all this matter other doubts arise. Ok, group music is a garbage and no one in their healthy judgment would consume it seriously, but with AI everything seems a matter of time. How close we are from a world hit created with artificial intelligence, who knows and anyone cares?
