Is Spotify's hottest new band even real?

Velvet Sundown's 850K listeners fuel AI rumours

A band named The Velvet Sundown has drawn intense scrutiny after its music gained hundreds of thousands of streams on Spotify, despite virtually no public presence or verifiable identity, reports the BBC. The group, which has more than 850,000 monthly listeners and a verified Spotify page, emerged online several weeks ago. Yet none of the four named musicians have granted interviews, appear to have social media accounts, or have performed live.

The absence of a human trace has led to growing suspicions that The Velvet Sundown and its music are generated by artificial intelligence (AI), a claim the band has denied via social media.

The controversy deepened when Rolling Stone US reported that a spokesperson for the band had admitted its music was created using an AI tool called Suno, only for the publication to later reveal that the spokesperson himself, a man named Andrew Frelon, was a hoax. Frelon told the magazine the deception was a "deliberate plot to hoax the media."

In a statement on its Spotify page, The Velvet Sundown distanced itself from Frelon, stating the band has "no affiliation with this individual, nor any evidence confirming their identity or existence." It also described an account on X (formerly Twitter), which claimed to represent the band, as fake.

Professor Gina Neff, of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge, said the incident reflects broader concerns around digital authenticity and AI.

"Whether this is an AI band may not seem important," she told the BBC. "But increasingly, our collective grip on reality seems shaky. The Velvet Sundown story plays into the fears we have of losing control of AI and shows how important protecting online information is."

The band's moody indie ballads feature guitar and male vocals, with lyrics such as "eyes like film in faded light, dreams walk barefoot into the night" and "ash and velvet, smoke and flame, calling out in freedom's name" - vague and poetic enough to plausibly originate from either humans or AI.

Rival music streaming platform Deezer said its AI detection tool flagged the music as 100 per cent AI-generated. Spotify has not yet offered a comment. Its CEO Daniel Ek previously said in an interview that Spotify has no plans to ban AI-generated music, though he opposes the use of AI to mimic real artists.