In case you've been living under a rock for the past week, this is the biggest controversy in the music business, is Velvet Sundown a fake band whose music is created by AI?
I won't drag you through the litany of stories but I will say that at this point it appears so. Now that the media is on the "band"'s trail there have been denials and obfuscation. And tweeting from an account that is not the band's own.
So the story is very sexy. After all, isn't AI the devil?
But if you listen to the music, it's the antithesis of what the major labels are selling, it's even different from conventional Active Rock, it sounds like nothing so much as seventies and eighties rock and roll, which major purveyors have decided no longer has mainstream appeal, even though it dominates the country charts.
But country has twangy vocals and banal, inoffensive lyrics, no self-respecting air guitar player is going to cotton to today's country.
But Velvet Sundown?
There is nothing original about these songs, NOTHING in genre, but in terms of song construction, this is new stuff, and although it is not tearing up the streaming charts it does have a presence, people are listening to the Velvet Sundown, or are they?
Certainly no one writing about the band seems to be, they're caught up in the discussion of AI. But if you pull up the music you will not want to immediately turn it off, it's not like nails on a chalkboard, the singer can...actually sing, which is more than I can say for many acts plying the boards today. And the band can play. Right now I'm listening to an instrumental and I won't say the playing is in the league of Jeff Beck, but it is catchy:
"Interlude": open.spotify.com/track/5nKHziy9tcaFzLEuowQ9KX?si=77daa7ff02a1493e
So how was this music created? Obviously by scraping the greatest hits of all time. If you're looking for something that pushes the envelope, Velvet Sundown is not it. But if you're looking for something to tap your toe to, to put you in a mood, Velvet Sundown does the job, certainly better than any TV vocal competition.
I'm all for AI companies paying for use of original recordings. The courts are deciding whether they can scrape the music for free. Last week's Anthropic decision said that if books are purchased, they can utilize them to train their models, if not... So, basically, that's the same thing. They've got to pay. But expect more clarifying decisions to come. And certainly, if you're making new Beatles or Beach Boys or whomever tracks you've got to pay a fee, but if you're creating Velvet Sundown?
Yes, we are competing against the robots, but don't be scared. You can beat them, you've just go to be original, which is too tough for many in this me-too world. Otherwise, the public is going to vote with their ears. As for me, I don't need to hear Velvet Sundown, but I'd rather listen to their numbers than so much of the paint-by-numbers Spotify Top 50.
Now if you actually take the time to listen to this stuff, which most bloviators won't, many of you will blow back. I'll hear from the musicians, who've spent years honing their skills. And the hip-hop and punk fans will puke all over their keyboards. But this sound used to DOMINATE the airwaves, give credit to the creators of Velvet Sundown for delving into an untapped market, which is what all innovators/disrupters/those who want to make bread do.
Why is everybody such a Luddite? Why is everybody so afraid of the future? AI is here, it's a tool. As for restricting it, the Chinese are not going to, so we probably shouldn't.
And AI doesn't create willy-nilly, you have to prompt it.
Listen to Velvet Sundown's "Dust and Silence," let it play, see what you think.
open.spotify.com/album/2uwFIEB6E7KYnxRXe0zRLs?si=BmmroECjQcqFyD12jChDvA
Or check out their previous album, "Floating on Echoes," whose "Dust on the Wind has 562,897 streams...or does it?
open.spotify.com/album/2luxbfZ6WrZf81utRhcW7j?si=J3xW1OqkQjCLfa62SI-lig
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