AI has been a contentious topic in pop culture lately, with opinions ranging from all ends of the spectrum. One thing that has been of high concern is the usage of AI in art and creative forms. Now, this is an opinion piece, so I will give my opinion, but I will also use objective facts and reasoning.

First and foremost, I think it is important to acknowledge what exactly I’m referring to when I refer to AI “art.” In this case, I will be discussing the rise of AI “bands” and “artists.” The first large example of AI music that I ran into was the “band” “The Velvet Sundown.” Now, when I first discovered them, it was easy to see they were AI. In fact, most people could tell by the picture of the band “members.” Since then, it seems they have tried to disguise this more, only mentioning AI usage in their Spotify bio, which the casual listener may not check. This band grew to success rapidly, gaining 1.2 million monthly listeners on Spotify since their first release in June 2025. Since they received quite a bit of backlash, they have also put in their Spotify bio that their music is created with AI assistance.

According to an article by The Times (linked below), “Deezer said that 18 percent of all music uploaded to the platform daily more than 20,000 tracks were 100 percent AI-generated. Of these, 70 percent were fraudulent” (thetimes.com). This is incredibly troubling for a number of reasons. Firstly, Spotify claims to not manually recommend AI music. However, the algorithm does suggest music in the Discover Weekly and other “designed for user” types of playlists. The success of The Velvet Sundown can be attributed to the Spotify algorithm.

Another example of AI music can be found under the artists “Aventhis” and “The Roux.” I find “The Roux” to be way more troubling than “The Velvet Sundown,” as “The Roux” does not specifically mention using artificial assistance in their music. “The Roux” uses Louisiana culture specifically to try to tell a story to their audience, speaking in first person and making up a backstory. “The Roux” has only been public since June 2025… kind of suspicious they came out within a few days of The Velvet Sundown on June 14, 2025… but they already have 241.6k monthly listeners on Spotify. Another AI artist I found is an artist called “The Devil Inside,” which has released 15 ALBUMS since June of last year, over-saturating the market and taking away from actual human artists, with songs amassing over 2 million streams on one song alone.

The band “The Devil Inside” has attributed producing credits to Laszlo Tamasi. In Mr. Tamasi’s Instagram bio, he calls himself a ghost producer. “Aventhis” music can be attributed to David Vieira, and he also attributes AI to his work. HOWEVER, “The Roux” and “The Velvet Sundown” only attribute their music credits to their band names, so I can say fairly confidently that I do not believe these artists are all tied to the same individuals or corporations.

Overall, my main point of contention with AI in music is this: the over-saturation of the market with AI-generated music is taking away from actual artists. An AI-generated song, and even album, can be produced and finished way quicker than a 100% human-made album. The fact that “The Devil Inside” was able to release 15 albums in one year is proof of this enough. No human artist is finishing 15 albums in a year financially, or just… in general. Spotify pays its artists out of a pool, and AI-generated artists releasing 15 albums in less than a year is genuinely stealing from the livelihood of actual artists working hard to produce art.

I do not want to see this continue. Something needs to be done legally about this, but it is going to be a difficult road. I hope to see larger companies and journalists speak out about these issues soon, because this is a very dangerous road to be on. If anything, this article should push everyone reading to SUPPORT SMALL ARTISTS as much as you possibly can!

As always, stay rowdy,
Kynny

lhttps://www.thetimes.com/uk/technology-uk/article/velvet-sundown-not-real-ai-generated-spotify-m9z0sv0xs?utm_source=chatgpt.com&region=global

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