The traffic receded as Chicago withdrew into the distance behind me on Interstate 90. Barns and trees dotted the horizon. The speakers in my rental car, playing Spotify from my smartphone, put out the opening riff of a laid-back psychedelic-rock song. When the lyrics came, delivered in a folksy vibrato, they matched my mood: “Smoke in the sky / No peace found,” the band’s vocalist sang.
Except perhaps he didn’t really sing, because he doesn’t exist. By all appearances, neither does the band, called the Velvet Sundown. Its music, lyrics, and album art may be AI inventions. Same goes for the photos of the band. Social-media accounts associated with the band have been coy on the subject: “They said we’re not real. Maybe you aren’t either,” one Velvet Sundown post declares. (That account did not respond to a request for comment via direct message.) Whatever its provenance, the Velvet Sundown seems to be successful: It released two albums last month alone, with a third on its way. And with more than 850,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, its reach exceeds that of the late-’80s MTV staple Martika or the hard-bop jazz saxophonist Cannonball Adderley. As for the music: You know, it’s not bad.
It’s not good either. It’s more like nothing—not good or bad, aesthetically or morally. Having listened to both of the Velvet Sundown’s albums as I drove from Chicago to Madison, Wisconsin, earlier this week, I discovered that what may now be the most successful AI group on Spotify is merely, profoundly, and disturbingly innocuous. In that sense, it signifies the fate of music that is streamed online and then imbibed while one drives, cooks, cleans, works, exercises, or does any other prosaic act. Long before generative AI began its takeover of the internet, streaming music had turned anodyne—a vehicle for vibes, not for active listening. A single road trip with the Velvet Sundown was enough to prove this point: A major subset of the music that we listen to today might as well have been made by a machine.
I don’t understand streaming music as a concept. My collection of individual tracks stands at about 1,700 (clocking in at 190 hours – that is 22 hours more than a week), and there are several full albums atop that.
In my 40s, new music discovery has been a low priority, but if I’m really in the mood, I’ll find a weekly radio mix from known quality DJs and hop over to Beatport if something moves me.
The use case for streaming is … you don’t want to choose what you listen to, pay monthly for stuff you’ll never own and pay for a higher data plan? That sounds like radio with really expensive extra steps (I ceased listening to the radio after being thrust into the rave scene in the late '90s, and through interactions with others came to the conclusion that I was missing out on nothing.).
I’m sure “AI” can produce perfectly milquetoast music, but are you ever going to want to listen again? I have tracks I’ve listened to hundreds of times because they mean something to me emotionally (and often have a temporal element wherein I remember where I was living and what I was doing the first time I heard it) – and most of my tracks do not have lyrics.
Layering nonsensical lyrics atop forgettable melodies sounds more like torture than a service providing any value.
People post nasty anti-social shit like this on lemmy and for what? and then you get a bunch of other accounts that just pop on to post “oh, and I just love my spotify, I just love to keep giving money to anti-social parasites.” Insufferable.
I use streaming services to check out new albums or new to me artists, but my main playlist lives on my own server.
Curiosity got the better of me and I had a listen to this “band”.
If you had told me it was Rival Sons, I would have totally believed it. That’s to say, it’s a pretty decent interpretation of the genre, but nothing ground breaking.
It’s sad to me that this is the case. The music is really fine genre fodder which means it will get listens
I do care. And this is what was missing for me to completely stop listening to new things and hear how glorious music was in the past.
Huh? I care and I would refuse to listen to AI music
I don’t understand streaming music as a concept. My collection of individual tracks stands at about 1,700 (clocking in at 190 hours – that is 22 hours more than a week), and there are several full albums atop that.
Streaming is very useful for people who don’t have such a curated collection already. Especially younger generations who didn’t grow up on physical media.
you don’t want to choose what you listen to
You can though? You can always pull up a specific artist, album, or track. You can even curate your own collection of favorites on these services, and shuffle from there.
But for a lot of users, there’s added value in discovery algorithms that’ll find new music for you. It is radio with extra steps, but those extra steps of telling the system what music you like and dislike do result in much better results than radio stations that weren’t tailored to your exact tastes. Before you built up your collection, how did you use to discover new music back in the day? I’m guessing probably from the radio, this is that for the current generation.
The slow death of being able to own things is sad. But unlimited access to nearly all music, with discovery tools, is a pretty dang tempting deal. The average user doesn’t really care about whether not they ‘own’ their music, just the practicality of being able to listen to music.
Consider that music piracy is way way way down compared to how rampant it was in the 2000s, because people are really happy with streaming now. There’s an old saying that piracy is a service problem, and after unsuccessfully trying to fight it head-on for so long, the industry won in the end by simply offering a better service.
People want to charge $15-20 for a CD, and if I did that for every album I listened to on Spotify, I would have spent at least a luxury car’s worth of music. I’m not going to ever pay that much again. Concert prices are already bad enough.
Piracy or streaming, pick one. Because the choices we had before that sucked.
The real problem is oversaturation, and the general worth of music. Good music is everywhere. People are making it every day and putting it out there, on Spotify, Bandcamp, wherever, and it’s all free or very cheap to listen to. Why should I specifically pay attention to Yee or Lil Shitstain or whatever is the college rock band of the week that got insanely popular?
Before you built up your collection, how did you use to discover new music back in the day? I’m guessing probably from the radio, this is that for the current generation.
In high school, sure, but CDs were still $20 ($44 in 2025 dollars), and my dislike of the fake tone of advertising made me want to abandon it as quickly as possible. Younger than that, I’d do the whole “hope a track comes on and hit record on a cassette” thing.
When I started college in 1997, mp3s were an entirely new concept, and I wasn’t exactly rolling in cash. My first foray was IRC Fservs in the dorm, and after that, I don’t clearly recall the order of operations regarding Napster, LimeWire, BearShare, Kazaa, ratio FTP servers (one of which I operated via dyndns and led to being exposed to music I never otherwise would have been), and likely a couple of other sources I’ve since forgotten about.
So yeah, it was piracy to start, but finding trance at the turn of the century was nigh impossible without shelling out a Jackson in hopes that the tiny electronic section at Tower Records would hold some gems I’d only be able to discover after purchase. Once tracks became anywhere from 79 cents to $1.89 I slowly rebuilt my extant collection with purchased copies (320kbps sounds much better than 112 to start, and I do like supporting artists) complete with full metadata.
Back when Amazon didn’t completely suck, they often had promos on digital goods when one opted for slower shipping; I got a lot of free music that way, as you could get a $1 credit for each item, leading to the somewhat absurd situation of things being effectively cheaper when purchased and shipped separately, which isn’t where economies of scale come from (and wasteful as hell in terms of packaging).
Looking up people seeding your favourite band/album/song and being able to see what else they were sharing was a revelation. It also felt a lot more direct than ‘people also listened to’
My phone is literally my music player, not really a phone. 500G of music to play whenever I want. I own it, I don’t need a subscription or the internet. And it’s real people putting their passion into a quality product.
Before streaming services were a thing, I had a very carefully curated and tagged music collection. But these days? Streaming is fine. There are a few songs, less than 10 out of a library of ~ 800, that I’ve added manually.
But you don’t own it!
For most people, they don’t care about that. They care about convenience. Open an app, search for a playlist/genre/band/song and hit play.
AI music sucks, because it is so bland and boring. It is certainly possible that it will get better, but for the genres I listen to, I highly doubt that.
I still have my library of tracks from the mid 2000s on a drive in my PC. Hell, I still have my iPod Classic.
That said, I spend 99% of my time streaming music.
That said², I never ever engage with playlists. They only serve to poison the well that is my algorithm. I have a tightly curated Youtube video algorithm and, even though Youtube Music’s algorithm is dogshit compared to Spotify, I still protect it at all costs.
You can still be an active listener on streaming services.
I’m currently three quarters of the way through Decapitated’s Organic Hallucinosis record while I clean the house. For the last month straight I’ve been mainlining Steven Wilson’s solo records as well as Porcupine Tree records. Music is not dead for the active listeners in the world. The focus should be on encouraging kids to appreciate a good album every once in a while.
Sounds awfully like vocaloid but lazier and undisclosed AI use.
I don’t use streaming at all, I buy every song I own on iTunes or other services that give you DRM-free files. I have a thing (call it a compulsion) about not using “other peoples’ things” when there’s an alternative.
As with all AI, I’m not intrinsically opposed to AI music as a concept, but I don’t want to use it now when the services that make it are leeching off of artists without paying them. I don’t get “into” bands (e.g. I can’t tell you the names of almost any musicians in the bands I listen to), and I don’t usually like concerts, so it’s not like I’ll be missing out on those like some fans would be.
I’m sure “AI” can produce perfectly milquetoast music, but are you ever going to want to listen again? I have tracks I’ve listened to hundreds of times because they mean something to me emotionally (and often have a temporal element wherein I remember where I was living and what I was doing the first time I heard it) – and most of my tracks do not have lyrics.
Layering nonsensical lyrics atop forgettable melodies sounds more like torture than a service providing any value.
I suspect this is mostly an artifact of our current early AI music models. Just like we got past the days of 8-finger monstrosities in newer image models, we’ll get more ‘context-aware’ and sensical lyric models for music. We just won’t be getting there ethically.
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