“We are at the beginning of a phenomenon”: The Velvet Sundown, Jul… Are we condemned to listening to music created by artificial intelligence?

By The New Obs with AFP

Published on August 6, 2025 at 12:47 p.m. , updated August 6, 2025 at 2:09 p.m.

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From the fake band The Velvet Sundown to the mystery surrounding Jul's new song, the excitement surrounding music created by artificial intelligence (AI), still "marginal" , marks "the beginning of a phenomenon" , observers believe.

"Is the song an AI???" asked a Jul fan on the social network X, as lost as other Internet users when faced with the Marseille rapper's latest song released on Friday. "Toi et moi" mixes a guitar tune with the artist's ultra-transformed voice, to the point that listeners suspect he created this track with the help of this technology. Already adept at the intensive use of the vocoder, which allows for a more robotic voice, " l'Ovni", the best-selling album in the history of French rap, maintains the vagueness surrounding this creation.

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But proven examples of AI use are multiplying. On his latest album, "BEYAH," rapper Damso included a song featuring backing vocals created with artificial intelligence. "We're trying things out, it's a tool," he explained. Other artists are using it to transform their own voices, such as electro composer DeLaurentis ("Musicalism") and DJ-producer Caribou, who is scheduled to play at Rock en Seine at the end of August.

“A-pop” with Timbaland sauce

Generative AI further muddies the waters by making it easy and inexpensive to compose instrumental music for ambient playlists, or even songs sung by fake artists. The rock band The Velvet Sundown, with nearly a million subscribers on Spotify, has admitted to being generated by AI.

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Iconic American producer Timbaland took it a step further by launching Stage Zero in June, a label focused on A-pop, artificial pop. Its first artist, TaTa, looks like a pop star with her pink hair... except she doesn't exist.

"The rise of generative AI has the potential to significantly transform the music industry. It accelerates and reduces the cost of content creation and production," observed Lisa Yang, an analyst for the American bank Goldman Sachs and author of reports on the global industry, in June in Paris. For the moment, "we are seeing more media coverage than popular interest on this subject," especially since "in reality, AI-powered music is very marginal in terms of audience listening and revenue," tempers Ulysse Hennessy, general director of the media Billboard France.

It thus represents more than 18% of the content posted online, but 0.5% of total listening on the Deezer streaming platform, which now notifies users of albums entirely generated by AI. In the case of Jul, "what is creating the stir is the doubt, the fact that we don't know" whether artificial intelligence was used and to what extent, estimates Ulysse Hennessy.

Remixing, creating loops, separating tracks: music has been partly built on what already exists, via sampling. "So, obviously, musicians are excited by this! The key is not to impoverish artists," because "AI poses the problem of remunerating music" on platforms, with a risk of dilution of value due to fraudsters, recalls Odile de Plas, head of the music department at the cultural magazine "Télérama."

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