Have you heard about The Velvet Sundown? They’re a band that went absolutely viral on Spotify, pulling in almost a million downloads. The wild part? The band isn’t real. The music, the images, all of it is AI-generated.
I was scrolling YouTube when I came across this awesome video from an AI professional who broke down exactly how this was pulled off. I was blown away by how simple the process is, and it’s a huge wakeup call for what’s coming in the music world.
This innovator decided to replicate the process to show everyone how it’s done, both as a guide and as a way to help us spot this stuff in the wild.
🎶 Step 1: Generating the Music with Suno
First, the YouTuber showed how the music was most likely made using a tool called Suno. It’s a super powerful AI music generator.
The genius part is how the creator got a consistent sound. He didn’t just type in “make a song like Blink-182.” Instead, he used ChatGPT to create a description of the band’s style first, like: “fast, catchy, emotionally charged punk with teenage angst, humor, and hooks…”
He then fed that description into Suno. Once Suno generated a track he liked, he used its “Make a Persona” feature. This is the key! It saves the style, instruments, and vocalist’s sound, so every future song he generated sounded like it came from the same band.
📸 Step 2: Creating the Band’s Image with ChatGPT
An AI band needs a look, right? For the band photos and album art, this expert turned to ChatGPT’s image generator. He prompted it to create an image of a “three-piece pop punk band from the early 2000s.”
To create more images for social media (like their Instagram), he would then use the first image as a reference to generate new pictures of the same three guys in different scenarios, like standing on a beach in life jackets.
💡 Pro Tip from the creator: You can often spot AI images by looking for inconsistencies. In the video, he points out how the band members’ life jackets had a different number of straps, and their paddles were all different styles, a dead giveaway!
🚀 Step 3: Getting on Spotify with DistroKid
This is the part I thought would be complicated, but it’s surprisingly straightforward. The YouTuber explains you can’t just upload music directly to Spotify. You need a music distributor.
He showed the process using a popular service called DistroKid. For a small annual fee, the creator signed up, created a band name (with help from ChatGPT, of course), uploaded the AI-generated songs and album art, and submitted it. The distributor handles getting it onto Spotify and all the other streaming platforms.
✨ The Full Blueprint
So, to recap, here’s the full process this industry pro demonstrated for creating a viral AI band:
- ✅ Use ChatGPT: To generate a unique band name and a detailed description of your desired music style.
- ✅ Generate Music: Take that description to Suno, generate songs, and use the “Persona” feature to lock in a consistent band sound.
- ✅ Create Visuals: Use ChatGPT to create the band’s image, album art, and social media content.
- ✅ Publish: Sign up for a distributor like DistroKid to upload your tracks to Spotify and beyond.
It’s both incredible and a little scary to see how easy this is. The mind behind the video shared his own concerns about “AI slop music” potentially flooding these platforms.
For the full deep-dive, including the live demo of generating the music and images, you have to watch the original video from the creator. He explains it all perfectly, go check it out!