Concerning news from Wales, where a Cardiff-based rock band have discovered that an AI ‘band’ that has been modelled on their music has overtaken their listening figures on Spotify.
The original, flesh and blood, human band is Holding Absence, whose frontman Lucas Woodland took to Twitter/X last night and shared this news: “So, an AI ‘band’ who cite us as an influence (ie, it’s modelled off our music) have just overtaken us on Spotify, in only TWO months.”
Woodland continued: “It’s shocking, it’s disheartening, it’s insulting – most importantly – it’s a wake-up call,” before urging us to “oppose AI music, or bands like us stop existing”.
The AI ‘band’ in question is Bleeding Verse, who, according to its Youtube channel are: “inspired by artists like Dayseeker and Holding Absence, we blend ambient textures, soaring vocals, and poetic lyricism to explore grief, identity, and healing. Lyrics from the heart. AI-assisted instrumentation and vocals.”
(And what sounds like ChatGPT on admin duties..)
Bleeding Verse are indeed ahead of Holding Absence in terms of Spotify. ‘They’ have 897,349 monthly listeners against the real band’s 847,638.
Holding Absence were formed in Cardiff a decade ago. They inhabit the emo/post-hardcore end of the rock spectrum, though they’re a touch more melodic than a lot of contemporaries. They’ve built up a following over the course of three albums, though commercial success has only been moderate – their most recent record, 2023’s The Noble Art Of Self Destruction reached No. 67 on the UK album chart.
It’s been a year in which we’ve started to glimpse the full implications of letting AI loose on music, and - for the most part - it’s been deeply disheartening. We’ve had a fake AI ‘band’, Velvet Sundown fool 400,000 Spotify listeners into believing they existed. There have been AI-generated songs uploaded to dead artists’ Spotify profiles without permission, and, more alarmingly, fraudsters uploading AI-generated slop onto living artists’ profiles, like digital parasites hooking themselves into a host body.
Last week, Spotify announced that it was bringing in new rules to deal with so-called AI slop. Harder to deal with are ‘artists’ that acknowledge their use of AI, such as Bleeding Verse. Until the UK government is prepared to act to protect copyright holders against the unauthorised use of their music to train AI models, then there’s little bands like Holding Absence can do but protest – loudly – that it’s simply not fair.
