Velvet Sundown, You Better Take Care

I’ve noticed an annoying trend when I set out each week to find new music for my music newsletter, Kick Out The Jams.

Increasingly, newly released tracks aren’t actual artists or bands.

They are songs generated by tools like Suno and Mureka that people are syndicating using services like DistroKid.

Some of this AI slop is absolute crap.

Some of this AI slop is hard to identify as slop.

Sometimes, this AI slop produces songs that are fantastic.

I’m particularly fond of the work of whoever publishes the Imagine K6O YouTube channel. They play a regular game of “what if this artist sounded like this genre from this era?”. The results are both convincing and enjoyable.

What if Iron Maiden were a Synthwave Band? 

What if Rage Against the Machine were a ‘60s Psychedelic Rock Band?

What if System of a Down Were a Western Band?

You get the idea.

But unlike some other AI-generated music, Imagine K6O is transparent about the fact that its “art” is the output of artificial intelligence.

Armed with a decent prompt, a YouTube link from an artist’s channel, and these AI tools, it is possible to produce songs that don’t entirely suck.

Here’s an example of a Gordon Lightfoot-inspired AI-generated folk song I created using Mureka called City Rhapsody. It’s not perfect. But it’s not horrible. And I wasn’t trying very hard.

About a month ago, an AI-generated band called The Velvet Sundown made headlines because it started to rack up a lot of listenership on Spotify.

For a while, it wasn’t clear if The Velvet Sundown was a real band in stealth mode or if they were an AI-generated “fake.”

Rick Beato did a fantastic job deconstructing their music in a YouTube Video by pulling apart the tracks and identifying the artifacts in the production. Spoiler alert: none of the instruments or vocals on The Velvet Sundown’s album were played or sung by humans.

The story got stranger.

Some dude using the pseudonym Andrew Frelon responded to media outlets like Rolling Stone magazine and the CBC, pretending to be the spokesperson for The Velvet Sundown, which he later said he had no involvement in.

A real or fake person behind the Andrew Frelon persona posted an intriguing piece on Medium.

(Will the real Andrew Frelon please stand up?)

A boatload of journalists reached out to the fake band’s fake X.com (Twitter) profile for comment.

This hoax likely helped boost listenership.

Whoever is actually behind the band finally updated their Spotify profile this week to disclose that they are a “synthetic music project guided by human creative direction, and composed, voiced, and visualized with the support of artificial intelligence.”

And they released a couple of new albums.

Spotify lists The Velvet Sundown as a verified artist.

They have over 60,000 followers, and they’ve racked up over 1.2 million monthly listeners.

Not bad for a band that doesn’t exist.

And pretty fucking great when you consider that a staggering number of songs by actual artists never get heard on Spotify. Ever.

The trend continues with a twist.

People are now generating and distributing AI versions of songs for artists who are dead.

I don’t know how I feel about that.

Maybe if the estate of the artist endorsed that sort of thing, it kinda makes sense.

But it is also likely an overt violation of copyright law.

Are the folks behind these AI songs getting paid by Spotify? Likely, yes.

Should they be paid the same as artists who exist IRL? In my opinion, no.

Based on the interest and activity AI music has garnered in just the last month, it is clear that some listeners can’t tell the difference between “real” and AI-generated music.

Other listeners simply don’t care.

Is AI music “art”?

Man, I don’t know.

Let some academic decide that one.

What I do know is that art now imitates AI art.

An actual band called Sons of Legion did a cover of The Velvet Sundown’s most popular single, “Dust On The Wind”.

Here is the “original” AI-generated song. Ironically, several people have made AI-generated music videos for this AI-generated song.

Here is the Sons of Legon cover of the AI-generated song played on actual instruments and sung by actual humans.

Which do you prefer?

Hit reply and let me know.