Universal Music Downplays Velvet Sundown’s Rapid Rise — But Has the Crackdown Started? AI ‘Artist’ Loses a Release Countdown on Spotify

The start of an AI crackdown? The Velvet Sundown has parted with an album-release countdown on Spotify.

Universal Music Group is unfazed by the streaming rise of AI “artist” The Velvet Sundown – at least according to new remarks from EVP and chief digital officer Michael Nash. Meanwhile, Velvet Sundown’s July 14th album-release countdown is no longer on Spotify.Nash weighed in on the “synthetic music project” during a panel at the UN’s ongoing AI for Good summit. With other panelists including IFPI head Victoria Oakley, Deezer CEO Alexis Lanternier, and musician Don Was, the sit down saw Nash “present a compelling vision for AI collaboration,” per AI for Good’s website.

Said vision “safeguards and enhances human creativity while harnessing the potential of technological innovation,” the same source summed up. At the top level, this harness-and-monetize approach wouldn’t exactly align with an aggressive effort to boot stream-heavy AI works from DSPs (or the name of the event in question).

Enter Nash’s measured response when asked about The Velvet Sundown during the panel’s Q&A portion. As summed up by Music Week, Nash downplayed the AI act’s monthly listenership (1.15 million at present) as a byproduct “‘of all the publicity.’”Furthermore, the total doesn’t break the virtual group “‘into the top 10,000 acts on the platform,’” according to Nash, who proceeded to emphasize UMG consumer research finding that the majority of AI-receptive music fans still prioritize human artistry.

Does this mean Universal Music is genuinely nonplussed about The Velvet Sundown episode? Perhaps; as things stand, the “band” is chugging along on Spotify and other services.

That said, a Paper Sun Rebellion release countdown is now absent from Spotify, and a single that was briefly connected to The Velvet Sundown, “Cardboard Sky,” has seemingly transitioned to Velvet Sundown’s distinct Spotify profile.

DMN reached out to Spotify for additional information – are streaming fraud allegations the cause of the partial takedown? – but didn’t immediately receive a response.

Back to Universal Music’s stance, it’s also possible that Nash and his company are publicly downplaying the situation while raising the alarm behind the scenes.Recall that UMG was reportedly the architect of Spotify’s royalties overhaul – including a 1,000-stream minimum that’s effectively diverting payments from indies in favor of much-streamed artists. The same recalibration brought, among other things, royalty-eligibility changes for white noise and other non-music audio.

And even at this relatively early stage, it’s safe to say the monetization potential of AI music is dramatically greater than that of white noise. How long will it be before an artificial intelligence track (or act) makes a serious commercial splash? Probably not long at all, evidence suggests.

More immediately than that, how many streams are AI uploads already racking up on DSPs? Not many, some might argue, with The Velvet Sundown’s millions of plays across two albums representing one of a few exceptions.But what if The Velvet Sundown overcomes its distribution hurdles and, in July 2026, has closer to 25 or 50 full-length AI projects on Spotify? And what about the billions of fake streams that Michael Smith allegedly directed to his own AI tracks? Plus all the other AI “artists” we don’t know about? The list goes on, and you get the idea.

A closing clarification: Media coverage alone hasn’t boosted The Velvet Sundown past the million-listener mark. Well before the press began running with the story, the AI artist was facing Reddit and social-media complaints from users who’d discovered the music in Discover Weekly and elsewhere.

To be sure, Velvet Sundown is still positioned prominently on popular Spotify playlists. In short, to the extent that the virtual group is recording actual consumption, the involved fans definitely aren’t forgoing meticulously crafted projects in favor of AI slop. Thus, certain works, artists, and labels are inherently susceptible to losing listeners to robots.