Courtesy of Velvet Daydream
Audio By Carbonatix
A band called the Velvet Sundown made headlines last summer. They weren’t the typical headlines associated with rock bands — heated internal drama, drugs, etc. — but rather reflected a very current controversy: Velvet Sundown was completely AI-generated.
When Rolling Stone reported the news in July, the publication noted that the robo-band, which had begun popping up on popular Spotify playlists just a month prior, had 900K listeners on Spotify. Now, that number has fallen by more than 750,000.
The band’s inherently spooky bio on Spotify and Apple Music (and something tells us this wasn’t written by a real person, either) reads: “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.”
Somewhere in between a nightmare and a tech-driven Armageddon for creatives, perhaps. But given the massive drop in the Velvet Sundown’s listeners, there’s some apparent optimism to glean: People prefer music and art made by, well, people.
At least, that’s what the almost-three-year-old Denver band Velvet Daydream hopes. Because now another AI band has popped up whose name just happens to be The Velvet Daydream.
Photo by Annabelle Payne
“A few months ago, someone sent us a message and showed us there was an AI band with our name,” says Ryder King, the vocalist/guitarist of the actual, human band (which makes incredible rock music, by the way). “I found out later that they were actually directly correlated to Velvet Sundown. … I went to the Velvet Sundown Spotify, and it said they appeared on the [AI] Velvet Daydream’s album. It doesn’t say that anymore, but I have a screenshot of it.”
If you visit The Velvet Daydream’s Spotify page, you’ll find a truly haunting image of its poreless AI members, who appear very similar to the Velvet Sundown. And unless rock bands have started using FaceApp like a Real Housewife, I don’t see how anyone could believe these are real people. Listening to the music is even worse; it’s also just as comical. “Somewhere in Europe” is a madlib of indie sadboi tropes: “Smoking cigarettes / Making plans for my life…” Meanwhile, “I Heard the City Breathing In Its Sleep” describes how “every window glowed like a holy womb.” The effect is singularly uncomfortable — almost as much as Taylor Swift’s song “Wood.”
The situation even caused some confusion amongst fans. “Since then,” King says, “we’ve had people even say we’re an AI band, because they don’t know.”
And nothing could be further from the truth. Velvet Daydream is one of the top rock bands in the Denver area, making a mark with its unique revival of raw classic rock that evokes the likes of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, the Stones and more favorites of the ’60s through the ’80s. The members, who include Kaeden Keys (guitar, vocals), Jude Pfanstiel (bass, vocals) and Nick Schwartz (drums, vocals), all look the part, too, decked out in bell-bottoms and paisley-print button-downs. They’ve maintained a growing presence on social media, sharing videos of the musicians playing covers and original tunes, and that following is reflected in packed-out live shows.
However, the real Velvet Daydream can’t get its AI poser off Spotify until it has trademarked its name. And the next part is how you also know these members are humans: They almost got scammed. There are plenty of fake trademarking companies out there, and one had the group believing it needed to fork out upwards of $3,000 to get approved. The band began raising money on a GoFundMe for the funds, but quickly removed it after finding a much cheaper — and legitimate — avenue. The GoFundMe had raised about $500, and Velvet Daydream was able to apply for a trademark for $600, King says.
“Artists have shared the same or similar names for decades, long before AI was part of the picture,” says a Spotify spokesperson. “Ownership of artist names is governed by trademark and intellectual property laws and isn’t something streaming platforms decide. Rights holders concerned about potential infringement can report it to Spotify through our established legal reporting process. As tools like AI evolve, Spotify continues to follow the law and maintain protections against misleading behavior.”
And what a relief that was: Velvet Daydream is getting ready for the release of a new, full-length album, which will be pressed on vinyl, as well as planning a tour. Being self-managed and self-funded, that’s enough to deal with already. But with a trademark, the goal is to force the AI band off the major streaming platform.
“We just want them taken down,” King says. “It’s robots. It’s not even art.”
The AI issue is one artists around the world are staring down. Of course, art’s intersection with technology has been examined for decades now, going back to the electric guitar and then musicians experimenting with Autotune or EDM music. But confronting the idea of music entirely composed by artificial intelligence is a newer phenomenon. Recently, director Guillermo del Toro denounced using generative AI in film, saying, “When they tell you that art doesn’t matter…or that a fucking app can do art, that leads to fascism.”
“It just doesn’t feel like an art form to me,” King says. “All you have to do, to my understanding, is put in a prompt of, ‘I want this song with this sort of vibe, and these sort of lyrics,’ and it’ll make an entire album for you. These AI bands are releasing an album a month, and they’re taking away streams from real musicians. It’s not easy to make an album. It’s just taken away so much from what real people are doing, and it’s really unfortunate.”
He notes that AI bands will never achieve what real ones can, especially in one particular area. “The other half of music…is the live show,” he says. “That’s really where you connect deeply with people. That’s where the music transforms into something completely above anything, in my opinion.”
Fortunately, there will be opportunities to see Velvet Daydream live this year, as the band announces shows in support of its album release. This will be the group’s second full-length since its impressive self-titled debut, and King says it “showcases where we’re at now and how much we’ve grown.”
Find more about the (real) Velvet Daydream at thevelvetdaydream.com.
