Image taken from The Velvet Sundown Facebook Page
Based on initial reporting by Rolling Stone
The Velvet Sundown, a mysterious musical act that rapidly gained traction on Spotify in June this year, has officially confirmed what many industry observers had initially suspected: the project’s music is generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
In a recent update to their Spotify artist bio, the band disclosed that it is a “synthetic music project guided by human creative direction, and composed, voiced, and visualized with the support of artificial intelligence.” The statement calls the project “an ongoing artistic provocation designed to challenge the boundaries of authorship, identity, and the future of music itself in the age of AI.”
The revelation follows weeks of speculation and media attention after The Velvet Sundown appeared seemingly out of nowhere in June 2025, quickly amassing over 900,000 monthly listeners and securing spots on high-visibility Spotify playlists. The project’s anonymity and high production quality led to widespread curiosity.
According to Rolling Stone, an individual using the alias Andrew Frelon falsely presented himself as a spokesperson for the band, conducting interviews with media outlets – including one with Rolling Stone itself – before later admitting the deception in a detailed Medium post. Frelon described the stunt as a media experiment meant to expose journalistic vulnerabilities in the age of viral AI content.
The revised Spotify bio elaborates further: “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.”
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Industry experts, including Glenn McDonald, a former “data alchemist” at Spotify, have offered insight into how the band gained such rapid exposure. Speaking to Rolling Stone, McDonald noted that the platform now accepts payments for playlist placement and is increasingly reliant on algorithmic curation over human editorial input. These shifts, he suggested, may help explain how AI-generated content like The Velvet Sundown can reach mass audiences with little transparency.
As AI-generated music continues to blur the line between art and automation, projects like The Velvet Sundown raise urgent questions about authenticity, attribution, and the evolving role of technology in popular culture.