An AI-generated band on Spotify has over 600,000 fans
Guess who has over 600,000 fans on Spotify? The Velvet Sundown. If you reacted by asking, "Who?", I wouldn't blame you.
The band has released two albums so far, "Floating On Echoes" and "Dust and Silence", a third album is releasing in a couple of weeks. The Velvet Sundown was formed by Gabe Farrow, Lennie West, Milo Rains, and Orion "Rio" Del Mar. So what? Some music band is popular, what's the big deal. Ah yes, this would be perfectly normal, if the band existed.
You read that right, The Velvet Sundown is an AI band. Their newly created social media accounts say that "Yes, We Are A Real Band & We Never Use AI". That's not very convincing, lads. Neither are the images that the band has shared on their official Instagram page. They seem really odd, and screams AI. You can't find interviews, or live shows of the band.
So, how are people reacting to this? It's going just about how you would imagine it. Spotify users are furious, as are many musicians, and people in general are upset that AI slop is so easy to create and fool everyone. Did you know that the streaming service does not require listings to reveal if a song was made by an AI? That's the whole point of this article, why would a music streaming service allow such content on its platform. Isn't this a harmful trend that could hurt real artists? AI content is trained on other people's hard work, and then misused, rebranded, and possibly sold.
By the way, the band's album on Deezer is flagged as "AI-generated content. Some tracks on this album may have been created using artificial intelligence." The band apparently reached out to Deezer to get this misunderstanding sorted out. Well, it is bad that Deezer does allow AI-created content, but at least it marks them as such, and it prevents such media from being monetized. According to Deezer, 18% of music uploaded each day is fake, that's over 20,000 tracks.
Music Ally reports that Ircam Amplify, a French company that launched an AI-generated music detector, ran both of The Velvet Sundown's albums through its tests, and the results showed that 10 of the album’s 13 tracks were AI-generated, and it had a ‘confidence’ score of 100 out of 100.
You know, I think the whole premise would make a good thriller movie. A band is so popular, their music is trendy, but nobody knows where the band members are. That would be spooky, mysterious. On the other hand, what if the band is real? This could be a good marketing technique, or a social experiment.
What do you think about AI-generated music, videos? Would you watch them, and pay money for such media?
I also thought that Spotify could have Etsy situation when they let drop shippers of mass-produced Chinese slop into a platform who caters to hand made products. If those AI bands and solo acts become the norm, I would expect a lot of artists pulling their music and switching to other services that have AI music blocked. Will there be any big music services for such artists? I do not know.
AI-generated content must be clearly stated.
Concerning any form of aesthetic appreciation the only criteria when it comes to music as well as to anything related to artistic expression is the pleasure it brings me, or not. I wouldn’t boycott an album because it’s been AI-generated, anyway not for purist reasons.
Would I boycott AI-generated literature, music, sculpture, painting for the sole reason that such works, productions affect artists and writers? Most likely, in particular I wouldn’t pay for anything of the sort.
The sad/fun part about this is that those albums are really good =) The only right thing is to steal them so no one gets paid anything.
Although Ashwin and Brinkman are alright what happened to Agencies Ghacks? That guy was prolific. Miss you dude.
The problem with modern music was “sampling”. It used to be one in the blue moon event in 80s and 90s, but it became extremely common this century. Music industry trained its customers that none-original works are as good as original ones. Very few people will not be able to differentiate between AI generated song and sampled song, in my opinion. And I checked one song from this AI band and as I expected, I can not decide whether it is heavily sampled from one of Beatles early era bands or is it pure AI rehash.