Ghost Musicians and the Era of Perfect Fit Content on Streaming
Backed by a strategy known as Perfect Fit Content, these fictional acts are created to blend seamlessly into mood-based listening.
The jury’s still out on whether or not a robot can write a symphony, but when it comes to a three-minute song to play in the background, AI is nearly indistinguishable from the real thing.
This truth was recently proven by The Velvet Sundown, a throwback indie rock group who quickly amassed hundreds of thousands of listeners on Spotify with songs like “Dust on the Wind.” Their tracks are styled after classic 70s songs and pleasant enough to blend into mixes of classic Americana or evocative genre playlists like “Vietnam War Music” or “Woodstock Festival 69.” There’s just one twist — the whole project, music, vocals, lyrics, and all, was generated on the AI music platform Suno.
As adept as The Velvet Sundown’s generation and marketing have been, the project’s fictitious nature isn’t exactly inconspicuous. Even before they admitted to their AI background, a cursory look through the band’s profile shows all the classic hallmarks of AI composition — a too-perfect band portrait and non-specific bio chief among them. However, the songs on the albums that launched The Velvet Sundown to fame, Floating on Echoes and Dust and Silence, are catchy, pleasant, and evocative enough that they can easily blend into playlists filled with traditional artists.