The fake band's story has been covered by PC Gamer, our pals at Mashable, Tech Radar and countless other sources. But The Velvet Sundown is not alone. They are one of an army of fake-seeming musicians on music streaming services, and they aren't even the most successful.
How to tell whether a band exists
Their music is so relentlessly mediocre, so devoid of personality, that it couldn't have come from humans. Everything from the lyrics to the song structures to the instrumentation is boilerplate. It's not even good AI prompting. It's not that The Velvet Sundown's music is bad; it's that it's not anything. There's a difference between the sound of, say, an electric guitar and a soundwave made by digitally smelting, combining, and imitating the sounds of countless other electric guitars. It's hard to describe the difference, exactly, but it's there. Also: For what it's worth, French music streaming platform Deezer's AI detection tool has declared that Velvet Sundown's music is "AI-generated content."
Exhibit two: the photo
Credit: tvs_music/XUntil an X account was created this week, the Velvet Sundown's entire online presence consisted of a few songs on streaming services. No website, no TikTok, no Instagram, no SoundCloud, no fan forum, no upcoming gigs, no nothing. It's just not how real bands do things in 2025, where an online existence is expected. Only fake bands suddenly appear on streaming services, especially bands polished enough to be as mediocre as The Velvet Sundown. According to the Spotify bio, Velvet Sunset's members are Gabe Farrow, Lennie West, Milo Raines, and Orion "Rio" Del Mar. I can find no evidence of these people having played with other bands, or existing.
Exhibit four: The law of averages
The Velvet Sunset are not alone. There are entire genres of music online that sound like they were made by machines. The Velvets (as fans call them) are not even the most successful fake-seeming band on Spotify. Take a listen to the Jazz for Study playlist. The first "artist" listed, "The Super Smart Trio," has no presence online outside of music streaming services, has released a total of 12 songs, and its biggest hit, "Ease Up," has been played over three million times. Or the "Tate Jackson Trio." They have over 12 million plays for "It's in the Middle of the Night," but they don't have a website and there's no evidence they've ever played a show. Check out lofi chill, a Spotify-curated playlist where "artists" like "Mellow Mirror" rack up millions of plays, despite only having released 12 songs, and showing no sign of existing. I can't say for sure whether it's all AI, but it walks like a duck and it's quacking really loud.
Why we should care
Back in the 1970s, when Kraftwerk imagined the machine-generated music of the future, at least it was cool: robotic, precise, cold, hypnotic, and undeniably futuristic. The AI music flooding Spotify today isn't visionary; it's just mediocre human music made by computers that were trained to be boring. Can we just get an opt-out button? The whole thing has me so mad I had AI write a KROQ-ready pop punk song about it.
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