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TechRadar
TechRadar
Graham Barlow

Apple and Spotify are sleepwalking into an AI music crisis – and The Velvet Sundown mess shows they need to act fast

Paper sun rebellion album.

Update, Thursday July 3: In a further twist to the story of The Velvet Sundown, we've been contacted by a representatives of the band who claims that "Over the past days, a number of impersonator accounts have surfaced across social media platforms, publishing fabricated statements and AI-generated imagery falsely attributed to us. Unfortunately, some of this material was cited in your recent article."

Since the same information is contained in the Spotify bio for the band, we are taking this new information on good faith and have updated the social media link in this article to reflect this. The new information in no way contradicts the suspicion put forth in the article that the band's music is AI-generated.

The first time I heard The Velvet Sundown’s album Dust and Silence on Spotify, I thought to myself, hmm, that’s not too bad. It hits a lot of the notes I look for in music I can listen to in the background while I work: acoustic guitar, nice vocals, chill beats, and a mellow 60s psychedelic vibe. There’s only one problem: this band might not exist.

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