For several months, an unknown group has vibrated the playlists of millions of listeners without ever going on stage or giving interview. Behind his bewitching melodies and nostalgic visuals, no musician of flesh and bones, but algorithms capable of composing, singing and producing whole albums. This unexpected phenomenon reveals the dazzling boom in music generated by artificial intelligence, a technology that redefines the rules of musical creation while blurring benchmarks between authentic work and automated production.
The phenomenon has become viral when the group recognized, on its Spotify page, being a synthetic project led by a human creative will but carried out with the support of generative models. In an enigmatic message, the creators say they want to blur the lines between machine and artistic identity. The approach is presented as an “artistic provocation” intended to question the boundaries of creation in the era of automation.
This positioning echoes a broader transformation of the music industry. While it was once it took a group for years to build its universe, tools like Suno or Udio now allow you to generate complete albums in a few clicks. According to a France Info survey, The Velvet Sundown has already published three albums in less than six weeks. This rhythm, impossible to follow for a human group, illustrates the potential – and the threat – that represents this new way of producing music.
When music generated by artificial intelligence shakes up the rules of the game
Beyond the surprise effect, the generalization of music generated by artificial intelligence raises deep issues on intellectual property, the remuneration of artists and the very value of musical creation. Sector players accuse Spotify, which does not filter this type of content, of encouraging the dissemination of synthetic songs to reduce costs related to copyright. In her work Mood Machine, journalist Liz Pelly explains that the platforms use these songs to fill playlists intended for passive listening, which allows them to maximize profits without fairly remunerating the artists.
Faced with this logic, other actors try to establish safeguards. Deezer, the main competitor of Spotify in France, has developed a detection tool to identify the pieces generated at 100% by AI. From June 2025, the platform has set up a visible labeling system on the albums concerned. According to a press release published by Deezer, 18% of the music added each day is the result of generative models, but these songs would only represent listening, a majority of which are considered fraudulent.
This contrast between artificial visibility and real listening reveals a well -established algorithmic strategy. The group The Velvet Sundown, for example, has a strong exhibition on Spotify but remains almost invisible on Deezer, where it had only 493 subscribers in early July. This discrepancy nourishes suspicions of an orchestrated highlight, or even an assumed favoritism for the content generated without human intervention.
Artists, platforms and listeners: everyone in the face of a silent revolution
In a sector already weakened by the decline in streaming income, the burst of music generated by artificial intelligence accentuates the pressure on artists. According to a joint study by the CISAC and the PMP Strategy cabinet, relayed in the Deezer report, up to 25% of the creators' income could disappear by 2028 because of the development of the AI. This shortfall would represent around 4 billion euros. For many, it is an irreversible tilting towards an economy of low -cost, standardized, and designed to please algorithms more than humans.
But this transformation does not only concern artists and platforms. The listeners themselves must wonder about what they listen to. The illusion of reality, maintained by licked visuals and automatically generated poetic texts, gives rise to a disturbing ambiguity. The Velvet Sundown is now present in playlists alongside Pink Floyd or Jimi Hendrix, blurring the landmarks between authenticity and simulation.
However, some voices nuance the debate. In a video, the Quebec sound technician Étienne Tremblay recognizes that the quality of certain compositions of the group surprised him. He observes a relatively successful musical structure, which suggests that an artistic management effort exists despite the automated origin of production.
The Velvet Sundown affair may well be only a taste of a broader upheaval. If artificial intelligence is essential in music as it does in other creative areas, it will become essential to ask the right questions. What is a work? Who should be remunerated? And above all, what do we really expect from a song: that she touches us, or simply that she accompanies our daily tasks without making any noise?
With an unwavering passion for local news, Christopher leads our editorial team with integrity and dedication. With over 20 years’ experience, he is the backbone of Wouldsayso, ensuring that we stay true to our mission to inform.
