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By Marni Rose McFall
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A band called The Velvet Sundown has launched a debut album on Spotify, and the group has quickly racked up over a million listeners. And though the group's aesthetic and sound seem lifted out of the Sunset Strip in the '60s or '70s, the reality is a little different.
The Velvet Sundown is described as "Not quite human. Not quite machine."
Newsweek has reached out to Spotify via an online contact form for comment.
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Why It Matters
There have long been concerns about the use of generative AI in creative sectors, with multiple petitions having been launched to ban its usage in certain areas and the likes of Sir Elton John and Dua Lipa pushing for AI regulations.
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Who Are The Velvet Sundown?
The Velvet Sundown currently has over a million monthly listeners on Spotify, with their top track "Dust on the Wind*"* having garnered over a 1.1 million streams as of press time.
The Spotify description reads: "The Velvet Sundown is a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction, and composed, voiced, and visualized with the support of artificial intelligence."
It continued: "This isn't a trick—it's a mirror. An ongoing artistic provocation designed to challenge the boundaries of authorship, identity, and the future of music itself in the age of AI."
Newsweek spoke to Dr. Fabian Stephany, an assistant professor for AI and Work at the University of Oxford, about the band. "When an act like The Velvet Sundown racks up more than a million monthly listeners on Spotify, it punctures the long-held belief that writing songs that move people is a uniquely human talent. If algorithms can now evoke emotion, we have to (once again) rethink what truly separates human and machine creativity," Stephany told Newsweek over email.
Images on Spotify and Instagram depict four individuals, though it appears all of these images have been created using AI. No person who has a confirmed affiliation with the group has spoken to the media, and there aren't any records of a live performance.
The Velvet Sundown does have a presence on social media, though the following is limited, with fewer than 3,000 followers across X, Instagram and TikTok combined. The latter two accounts were not verified at time of writing.
The description on the Instagram page reads: "Saving Modern Rock," and is filled with AI generated images, including recreations of famous album covers. One post is an AI-generated recreation of The Beatles' 1969 album, Abbey Road, while another is a recreation of Queen's 1974 album Queen II.
The narrative has been further confused by the fact that on July 3, The Velvet Sundown released a statement where it said that someone had attempted to "Hijack the identity of The Velvet Sundown," by "releasing unauthorized interviews, publishing unrelated photos, and creating fake profiles claiming to represent us."
The post said that there was an "active attempt to misrepresent our work," and to not trust any content that does not come from The Velvet Sundown's official channels.
Stephany told Newsweek: *"*Passing off machine-generated music as the work of flesh-and-blood artists risks eroding trust at the very moment authenticity has become a prized commodity. On top of that, generative models necessarily remix vast libraries of copyrighted work. The industry has yet to decide whether that counts as fair use, licensed sampling or outright infringement."
"The bigger story is what this experiment says about the evolving division of labour. You can't simply type create a viral rock band and watch the royalties roll in... AI doesn't write the hit on autopilot but it might turn one skilled creator into a ten-person studio," he added.
What People Are Saying
Dr. Fabian Stephany, an assistant professor for AI and Work at the University of Oxford, told Newsweek over email: "The band's popularity tells us that curiosity often trumps provenance—at least on first listen. Whether audiences stay once the novelty fades will depend on honest storytelling and sustained quality. What's certain is that we'll see similar AI-human hybrids in film, fashion and even stand-up comedy. The music world is simply the latest canary in the coalmine."
The Velvet Sundown on X: "All characters, stories, music, voices and lyrics are original creations generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools employed as creative instruments. Any resemblance to actual places, events or persons - living or deceased - is purely coincidental and unintentional. Not quite human. Not quite machine. The Velvet Sundown lives somewhere in between."
Update 7/10/25, 7:10 a.m. ET: The headline on this article was updated.
Update 7/9/25, 9:57 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with comment from Fabian Stephany.
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