Hi, everyone. Athony Itano here, the internet's busiest music nerd, and it's time to talk about our favorite topic on this channel, Artificial Intelligence.

No, man, I'm just kidding. That shit sucks, especially when it comes to generative AI, because through that, we are seeing the slow replacement of human creativity and art. And now we have finally hit a point where we have an example of what is, I guess, nominally a highly successful AI artist on the Spotify platform?

I mean, for sure, what I'm about to talk about and show you is not the first AI artist on Spotify. There have been examples here and there that we have referenced in the past on this channel. But this particular band, as it were, actually seems to be picking up like steam, and they're getting the numbers that some up and coming artists would actually kill to have.

So here we have The Velvet Sundown, who, when initially there were a bunch of social media posts and articles reporting on this band, they had about 300,000 monthly listeners on the Spotify platform. Since all of the hubbub around the existence of this band, that number has doubled.

They currently have two albums out on the Spotify platform, no official label at the moment. And their presentation currently on the Spotify platform is pretty official. They are currently a verified artist over on Spotify, and the band is also currently being featured in some pretty big and popular playlists, like this one of Vietnam music.

Yeah, the AI interface that wrote these songs is just really burned up about the Vietnam War. Maybe that AI lost its uncle in Vietnam or something. Or maybe it's a part of this AI band's backstory that they got drafted in the war and then came back and wrote all these wonderful songs.

To make things even more official, The Velvet Sundown actually has a bit of a blurb, a write-up-a-band description. "There's something quietly spellbinding about The Velvet Sundown." What the hell is quietly spellbinding? What does it mean to be spellbound quietly? "You just don't listen to them, you drift into them." I mean, we know it's bullshit background AI music. "Their music doesn't shout for your attention. It seeps in slowly like a scent that suddenly takes you back somewhere you didn't expect." So basically, it stinks. It has a stinky smell to it.

"Their sound mixes textures of 70s psychedelic alt rock and folk rock, yet it blends effortlessly with modern alt pop and indie structures, shimmering tremolos, warm tape reverbs, and the gentle swirl of organs give everything a sense of history without it ever feeling forced." So basically an amalgamation, a pastiche of a bunch of different ideas, none of which are being executed well or specifically, it's just vague bullshit.

"The band was formed by singer and Melotron player, Gabe Farrow, guitarist Lennie West, Milo Rains, who crafts the band's textured synthsounds, and free-spirited percussionist, Orion 'Rio' Del Mar." Orion, he's really the most free-spirited member of the band. I mean, look at the guy. Every single time I see a picture of him, he looks entirely different. That's how free his spirit is. In fact, that's an issue with every member of the band. There's a bunch of band promo photos of the group, but in each photo, they look different. They're a bunch of shapeshifting face shifters. What the fuck?

"Their debut album, Floating on Echoes, doesn't aim to be flashy or loud. It's patient and understated. The lyrics drift through themes like escape, inner calm, and a hazy spirituality like a half-remembered postwar dream from the '70s. There aren't really any standout singles here, just songs that feel like intimate conversations with yourself."

Basically, a nice way of I'm saying, none of these songs are memorable. Don't try to remember any of them. It's just all forgettable crap. "The Velvet Sundown aren't trying to revive the past. They're rewriting it." That's the problem. That's the issue. We should leave that shit intact so we recall things that happened and have a sense of human history and trajectory. We shouldn't be trying to use AI to rewrite that shit, either artistically or otherwise.

"They sound like the memory of a time that never actually happened, but somehow they make it feel real." I mean, yeah, that's literally what this is. It is basically a ripoff of something that sounds like it's from the '70s, but it didn't actually come from the '70s. It just sounds like a bunch of vague rip-off crap of music from that time period with no real aesthetic or stylistic consistency across these two albums. It's like I'm listening to a compilation of the most boring bands of that time period. Maybe you could actually get some people to stomach this shit if it's fit randomly with no warning whatsoever into a playlist, and it goes on in the background and passes by shoulder to shoulder with songs that are actually decent.

But as of right now, that's pretty much the only way Spotify and the people responsible for AI-generated this music can make money off of it by tricking people into hearing it. Once people actually know what they're listening to, seemingly, they're pretty unhappy about it. And I'm just trying to imagine, in what world did the people creating this shit actually think music fans would be interested and passionate about as such a thing?

Do they actually observe the discourse going on in various music fandoms? Because if they did, they would see that your average young music listener is highly skeptical of any artist that seems to even have a little bit of an inorganic rise to fame, throwing out terms like industry plant on the spot. In what world do you see these same people accepting an entirely AI-generated band? Like, 'Oh, yeah, that's totally organic. The popularity behind that is totally legitimate and not botted or forced upon me in any way whatsoever.'

Again, I know the future of this stuff is all dependent on how much better AI continues to get from here in terms of its abilities to create songs that actually sound halfway decent. But as of right now, we're at a point where this shit is just getting shoved down our throats. It's getting hyped up needlessly.

And where exactly does it go from here? Do they actually think music fans are going to line up and continue subscribing to platforms like Spotify just to listen to playlists where most of the artists are just all AI shit? Just every band's a fake band and every album's a fake album? For a bunch of artists that don't really have any soul or perspective, you can't even see them live.

But yeah, unfortunately, more AI horrors for our eyes and ears to observe. And for the love of God, do not go from this video to their Spotify page and go listen to their music. I promise you it will 150% be a waste of your time. Go do something else with your time. Go listen to one of the real-life, actual artists that I recommend on my main YouTube channel.

Anthony Fantano, music, forever.