An indie group is petalling in Spotify. All normal except for one thing: they are made with ia

A couple of months ago we talked about tools as powerful as Suno Ai that allowed to create practically indistinguishable songs of a generated by humans. There is nothing strange that, a few weeks later we are already seeing musical groups generated from Musical Models of AI, and that not only manage to deceive the public but also generate millions of listeners and, therefore, substantial amounts of money in benefits. The new case (and surely will not be the last one) is that of the false Folk The Velvet Slown band.

Lie folk. The first calls for attention to the legitimacy of The Velvet Sundown took place in Reddit (in this and in this thread), where attention was called to the possible absence of the band despite its more than 550,000 monthly listeners have already been recommended by the platform algorithm. The reactions went from indignation to resignation, and at that time a boycott call was made to Spotify, for not clearly noticing the nature of these contents.

How to detect it. Shortly after, the music expert Chris Dalla I explained in Tiktok How it was possible to distinguish The Velvet Sundown from a royal band: certain metal nuances in the voices, typical of when they are generated by AI, very little original titles (‘Dust on the Wind’, very similar to the legendary ‘dust in the Wind’ of Kansas), the clear origin by means of both the images of the group and of the description of the same (with false quotes or abundance of scripts. of chatgpt texts in English). And then, of course, there is the total absence of information about the band or its members on the Internet. There is no digital footprint prior to the appearance of the group in Spotify.

The definitive test: Deezer. Deezer is one of the few platforms of streaming of music that has recognized the problems of an excess content generated by AI (18% of all that rises to digital platformsaccording to your own report). That is why they launched a tool that warns their listeners of the possibility that they are listening to artificially generated music. In the case of The Velvet Slown, His verdict is unequivocal: The possibilities that your songs have composed with Suno, you or other similar tool are very high.

Why have so many reproductions. However, The Velvet Sundown does not have too many listeners signed to their profile: just 11,000 at the time of writing these lines. Where do all your listening monthly come from? Basically, to appear on playlists who arrive thanks to five very specific users, according to the investigation Musically: Extra music, Collective Solitude, Kultpop!, In-Between and Lost Records.

These profiles have included the entire records of The Velvet Slown in very often lists, although their themes (for example, the Vietnam War) have no apparent relationship with the music of the band. But these appearances in lists lead them direct to the weekly discoveries of the algorithm.

The juicy royalties. What generates this is an avalanche of Royalties whose legitimacy is, in the best, doubtful, since they are often used Bots to inflate the statistics (There are already, in fact, cases giving tumbos in court for this issue). The use of bots is not demonstrated with this new non-base, but the objections around it go rather by the ethical point of view: with its somewhat artificial success (based on “deceiving” the algorithm forcing its appearance in Playlists very listened to) are removing space to authentic bands.

And money: reproductions are paid in Spotify between 0.003 and $ 0.005 for each listening, so that money is not going to real musicians.

The precedent: the girls. At the end of 2024a Spanish band generated entirely by AI became the musical controversy of the moment. The girls obtained some impact with their first album, ‘Last bath’, and became interviewed by media such as eldiario.es. Those responsible, from anonymity, stated when they were discovered to be responsible for the lyrics, but not music or interpretation. In this case, they disappeared from Spotify by decision of their Altafonte distributor, although in a few days they returned to platforms, already self -managed.

Those responsible fled forward with A manifesto in which they turned the project into an idea of ​​collaborative philosophy, trying to provide a certain experimental entity to the girls. Only seven months later, possibly their authors have managed to strain many other experiments on platforms … and are charging for it.

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