In a digital age where technology is leaping forward by the minute and has highly affected the way we live and generate content, it is no other than the music industry that has benefited from a rather extraordinary occurrence.
The emergence of The Velvet Sundown, a musical group who has astoundingly secured 372,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, has literally turned on its head our vision of and attitude towards “real” music. Here’s the most interesting thing—you will not find humans behind the creation of the song.
The Mysterious Rise of The Velvet Sundown
The whole thing unrolled around a band that is like no other. The Velvet Sundown is the musical storehouse of the world of such songs as ambient greetings and catchy rhythms. Only the members—Gabe Farrow, Lennie West, Milo Raines, and Orion “Rio” Del Mar—are not there. The story tells that they are only an idea.
There’s no trace of them on any site, they haven’t been in any interviews. No one has ever seen them play live, and, even more strangely, they don’t have a social media presence.
It is a fact that when you search one of the members or the band, you will not be returned any results, only a dark digital whirlpool. Then why the creepy silence? What are the chances that the music much loved by listeners has been created by some form of artificial intelligence?
AI Music: The New Frontier of Creativity
While artificial intelligence was once engaged in very different sectors like biomedicine or business, it has now broken into the creative world. Music, in particular, is normally associated with people and their emotions, and yet The Velvet Sundown denotes a challenge.
Their songs, which are well-crafted and have lyrics that seem to take us through time to the future, leave room for questions: Can a machine create art which has the power to touch people?
The era of sophisticated algorithms and machine learning tools has worked wonders in artificial intelligence. In fact, nowadays, AI is becoming more efficient than humans in carrying out various tasks such as content development and music creation.
The breakthrough was made by The Velvet Sundown who with the help of AI completed the first stage of this potential new development, and their popularity has sparked off a debate about the destiny of the music industry.
The question remains: Is a song still a product of human creativity? What if, on the other hand, it is so close to being a computer program that it will soon be beyond human access?
The Invisible Hands Behind The Velvet Sundown
Are you interested to know who exactly is behind the curtain of The Velvet Sundown? Would you believe us if we said that a group of programmers, engineers, and designers who have applied AI in order to generate all the assets of this band, namely both the music and the image and persona of the band members, is the driving force?
It is noticed that the songs have been meticulously done, and then the bio on their Spotify page looks as if it was written by a human being. Nevertheless, there is no information about the people behind it in the credit list.
There is only a vague mention of the band itself. Controversy over the authorship of AI-generated music and the main follower of the development process has been raised with the help of this domain of the technology.
It is well possible that as AI progresses, The Velvet Sundown phenomenon follows the early signs of a huge shift towards virtual musicians in the industry.
How AI Might Take Over the Roles of Human Musicians Soon?
People who are skeptical about The Velvet Sundown being a solitary case should better recycle their original point. AI music is the next significant game-changer in the music industry. As AI systems become more sophisticated, we need to look with more urgency the question of whether they are capable of substituting the human power in music.
AI is a potential tool that might revolutionize not only the mass creation but also the consumption of music through music on-demand in any style or genre that you can think of.
A few AI-based music synthesis engines like OpenAI’s Jukedeck, Google’s Magenta, and Suno have already been mobilized and they have started churning out music that not only sounds uniquely human but also very attractive as well.
The Velvet Sundown, which has increased its fan base and with its smooth, neat, and fresh content, is evidence of not only the music-generating capability of AI but also that it can create some kind of emotional connection with the audience, that it may even be more effective than some human artists.
The Potential for AI-Generated Music to Dominate the Music Industry
Say for instance, what if in the years to come, record companies started to sign up virtual AI artists instead of human ones? AI would be able to effortlessly generate any kind of music, for which there is a perfect target audience, if necessary, by optimizing every note to exactly match people’s preferences.
This scenario would totally upset the music industry’s financials as it would lead to the removal of all the costs involved in human artists—studio time, travel, physical performances—thus maximization of profit would be realized.
With the downloading platforms fast becoming the preferred mode of music consumption, AI artists will most certainly be the only way to reach even the smallest niches. In this case, The Velvet Sundown can only be just the first among many virtual performers who will be successful in the industry, and the human artists, therefore, could come and find themselves competing with machines that can go on without resting or taking a break.
What Does This Mean for Music Listeners?
We as listeners have always been aware of the relationship with the music industry as something much more complex than just the sound itself. It is mainly the story, the persona, and the artist’s journey that the listeners are usually attracted by. However, what will happen if that artist becomes just a piece of code, an AI-powered machine that imitates the most beautiful expressions of humanity?
This is a disturbing question. What will be our reaction as consumers when it finally dawns on us that the songs we cherish the most, the very ones that have had deep meaning for us, are not the work of a real person but of an AI-powered machine designed around our preferences and capable of delivering what we like?
The case of The Velvet Sundown is just one instance of AI’s growing penetration into the music industry. As AI is advancing at an exponential rate, we may live to see a day when it’s not only our playlists that machines take charge of; they could be organizing the background music of our lives as well.
The Future Is Here, and It’s AI-Generated
The use of AI to write music, as we have witnessed in the song The Velvet Sundown, is not a random episode on the historical timeline—it’s a sneak peek into the musical future.
The question of whether AI will replace human musicians once and for all is still up in the air, however, what counts at the moment is that AI is a big part of music’s creation and consumption process.
In the face of this technology the listener will be forced to decide what really matters the most to them, the art or the artist. And soon enough, the music industry will not only see human stars but also digital ones, which may possibly change our perception of art and creativity forever.
