While AI band The Velvet Sundown has more than 1 million monthly listeners on Spotify, a fake official account has appeared and is spreading hoaxes in the media



The Velvet Sundown , an AI band with over 1 million monthly listeners on the digital music distribution service

Spotify , is attracting attention. It has been revealed that a fake account, X, posing as an official account for The Velvet Sundown, has been spreading rumours about the band to the media.

Velvet Sundown 'Spokesperson' Says He Was A Hoaxer
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/ai-band-velvet-sundown-spokesperson-hoax-1235378542/

Velvet Sundown 'Spokesperson' Now Says He's a Hoaxer
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/velvet-sundown-ai-band-suno-1235377652/

I am Andrew Frelon, the guy running the fake Velvet Sundown Twitter | by Andrew Frelon | Jul, 2025 | Medium
https://medium.com/@andrew.frelon/i-am-andrew-frelon-the-guy-running-the-fake-velvet-sundown-twitter-fcab2b7e471b

On June 29, 2025, a band called ' The Velvet Sundown ' began to attract attention on Spotify. The reason why The Velvet Sundown attracted attention is because their songs and promotional materials (photos, etc.) were created by generative AI. The Velvet Sundown has over 1 million monthly listeners.

The Velvet Sundown | Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/intl-ja/artist/2GRtyAXWUiisGYub5SGMrb



The Velvet Sundown has an official-looking X account, @Velvet_Sundown . It was revealed by Andrew Fleron, the account's administrator, that @Velvet_Sundown had been spreading elaborate hoaxes to the media. The Velvet Sundown's official Spotify account also announced that Fleron has no connection to the band.



According to Andrew Freron, who runs @Velvet_Sundown, the account is a fake official account that was created in March.

Frelone was testing whether he could use AI to create songs and make money on Spotify, just like The Velvet Sundown did a year ago. Frelone created songs and artwork with AI and used bots to earn plays on songs published on Spotify, which increased the attention of the songs, but he was unable to earn a sustained number of plays on his songs and was unable to make a big impact or earn revenue. Thanks to this experience, Frelone wrote, he was able to 'fully understand' the phenomenon known as The Velvet Sundown.

Since he noticed that The Velvet Sundown had almost no social media accounts related to the band other than its Instagram account, Freron thought, 'What would happen if I created an official X-account-style account for The Velvet Sundown?' and created @Velvet_Sundown.

The reason for creating the fake account was to test journalists: 'Having some knowledge of the dynamics of journalism from past projects, I thought it would be interesting to start criticizing journalists in general terms for not contacting 'us' for comment,' he wrote.

'Journalists who pursue timely news like The Velvet Sundown often have deeply flawed information verification processes. As journalists compete to be the first to publish, they often ignore best practices around fact-checking and verification. In order to meet tight deadlines, journalists appear to ignore aspects of ethics,' Freron wrote, pointing out that running a fake account for The Velvet Sundown exposed the media's sloppy information verification processes.

Below is an example of a journalist who contacted the fake official account operated by Mr. Frelone via X's direct message.



In addition, The Velvet Sundown describes the project as 'a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction and composed, voiced, and visualized with the support of AI.' All characters, stories, music, voices, and lyrics featured in The Velvet Sundown are original creations generated with the help of AI tools used as creative tools, and any resemblance to real places, events, or people (living or deceased) is purely coincidental and unintentional. The creators of The Velvet Sundown explain that 'it's neither human nor mechanical. The Velvet Sundown lives somewhere in between.'




Related Posts:

in Software,   Web Service, Posted by logu_ii