There’s apparently another high-profile AI imposter on the DSPs. The metalcore \u201cband\u201d Broken Avenue has nearly 130,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, where it is a “verified artist” and has one of the platform\u2019s auto-generated \u201cThis Is\u201d introductory playlists (which is triggered by a popularity threshold).<\/p>\n
Fans of Counterparts, Knocked Loose, and the Devil Wears Prada say whoever is behind Broken Avenue has generated music and artwork to explicitly mimic those bands. For example, in the image atop this article you can compare the art for Broken Avenue\u2019s new single \u201cfinally free\u201d (left) to the cover of Counterparts\u2019 2019 LP Nothing Left To Love (right).<\/p>\n
Also suspicious is that the dozens of songs associated with the Broken Avenue profile were all uploaded in the past six weeks. All credit the unknown \u201cJames Tolby\u201d as composer and lyricist. (The one exception is an EP that lists 2011 as its year and \u201cSantana Marsh\u201d as the composer.)<\/p>\n
Broken Avenue was brought to the attention of Counterparts’ singer Brendan Murphy, and he\u2019s now called out the suspicious act on X. Alongside an image of the songwriter credits, Murphy wrote: “$100 to anyone who can get me the legit contact info for James Trolby I won\u2019t do anything fucking crazy you won\u2019t get in trouble.” Time will tell if James Trolby is a real person, a pseudonym, or an AI-generated artist.<\/p>\n
Any of this bullshit sound familiar? Last year there was the whole debacle with the Velvet Sundown. The AI-generated “psych-rock band” racked up millions of streams while insisting it was entirely human. That lie quickly crumbled within a week after a so-called spokesperson came forward about “art hoaxes<\/a>,” only for him to be outed as a fake spokesperson<\/a>. Eventually their streaming bio was updated to acknowledge it is a \u201csynthetic music project<\/a>,\u201d something that could be easily overlooked by a casual listener.<\/p>\n Among music platforms, Deezer has at least been proactive about identifying AI music on its platform. In November it said over 50,000 AI-generated tracks are uploaded to the app daily \u2014 34% of its all new music. Incidentally, Broken Avenue have only “20 fans” on Deezer; maybe all their botting funds went to Spotify. <\/p>\n In a world where verified badges have mostly lost all meaning, platforms are desperately overdue in taking action to better vet their “artists.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There’s apparently another high-profile AI imposter on the DSPs. The metalcore \u201cband\u201d Broken Avenue has nearly 130,000 monthly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":384891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":{"0":"post-384890","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/384891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}