Music

There you are scrolling the Internet, when a catchy song comes on to accompany a reel. Before you know it, it becomes a gentle little earworm you can't escape. All the elements of "good music" seem there: a soulful lead singer, nice melody, rockin' (okay, competent) drum beat, and maybe even relevant lyrics?

You're vibing with it, so you do some research. Who is this band? How long have they been around? When did this song come out? But then—plot twist!—you learn there were actually no humans involved in the making of this folk song (other than coders who created the software). And yet, that didn't stop it from climbing to number one on the UK charts.

- A song by The Velvet Sundown www.youtube.com, Bangers Only

The comments under this YouTube clip are genius. One person writes, "You can hear the pain in his motherboard." Another quips, "Loved this song since I was 8-bit old, now at 64GB this brings back a lot of memories." Maybe the best? "My wife used to love this song, we (would) just listen to it while driving on the highway. She passed in 1998. She was a toaster, I'm a calculator."

And while people are making these jokes with hindsight, a lot of folks didn't realize it was a super deep fake until after the fact. The song, entitled "Dust on the Wind" (you read that right—they merely changed a preposition), comes from the band The Velvet Sundown. The only problem is...there is no such band.

Self-described musician and teacher David Hartley asks on his YouTube channel, "How did this totally generic-sounding band gain over a million listeners and trick everyone along the way?"

-David Hartley explains The Velvet Sundown phenomenon www.youtube.com, David Hartley

Hartley explains, "The Velvet Sundown first appeared on Spotify in June 2025, releasing two full albums just weeks apart." (The albums are called Floating on Echoes and Dust and Silence.) He notes that the music is reminiscent of soft '70s rock, which he admits is "pleasant."

What's even more mind-boggling is Spotify lists the band members' names in a bio section. But when people began to look up these listed artists, there is no trace of them online. "They have no photos. No social media presence. Nor do they ever appear to have played a live gig before."

This would definitely not be the first AI band invented. Pablo G. Bejerano who writes for Spanish-language newspaper El PaÍs, gives another example: "The description of the album Rumba Congo (1973), uploaded to YouTube, tells the entire story of the musicians that recorded it. The band is called Concubanas. Founded in Havana in 1971, the group played a unique fusion of Cuban and Congolese music. They disbanded in 1992, but not before leaving behind countless musical gems. At the very bottom of the description beneath the YouTube video, there’s a note that the content is 'altered or synthetic.' This phrase is a euphemism to indicate that the music in the video was generated using AI. The band isn’t real."

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Recently, The Guardian reported that, "Up to seven out of ten streams of artificial intelligence-generated music on the Deezer platform are fraudulent, according to the French streaming platform." They further assess, "AI-generated music is a growing problem on streaming platforms. Fraudsters typically generate revenue on platforms such as Deezer by using bots to 'listen' to AI-generated songs – and take the subsequent royalty payments, which become sizeable once spread across multiple tracks."

But Hartley asks, "Why did THIS band make it to the top, eventually passing real artists?" He points to a tweet on X, where the band (which, remember, is not real) put out a statement that read: "Many news outlets are falsely reporting that we are an AI-generated band. Nothing could be further from the truth. #VelvetSundown #NeverAI"

He claims Spotify is well aware of these "ghost artists" and that it turns a profit for them. "The Velvet Sundown was strategically placed into a number of popular user-curated playlists."

In essence, the algorithm got tricked. Because the songs were being placed onto playlists (not unlike that morning when a new U2 album showed up in our iTunes music folders), the albums were getting hundreds of thousands of listens. The more listens, the more popularity, creating a never-ending feeding loop, like a snake eating its tail.

A man eventually came forward, and in an interview with Rolling Stone, claimed the whole thing was an "art hoax." But ultimately, this AI band has taken on a life of its own and has countered this claim. The guy himself admits that the hoax claim itself was a hoax and that he was ultimately tricking the media.

A record player plays a record. Giphy

On the subreddit r/Let'sTalkMusic, someone asks in part, "What's the best way to verify if an artist is real or not?"

This received over one hundred comments. One person states, "The only guaranteed way to never hear AI-generated music is to stop letting algorithms pick what you listen to." This fan of punk music adds, "Bands play live, bands are made of people with lives and experiences. An AI band is not going to have a real presence or history. I know Rancid is a real band, I’ve seen them. I follow Matt Freeman on Instagram and it’s actually him because he likes to talk about playing bass and will often play some of his favorite riffs. I don’t think it’s hard to figure out if a band is real."

Many highly suggest simply unsubscribing from algorithms, reading music reviews, and buying vinyl again. AI will probably find a way around it, but it's a start.