Cardiff-based rock band Holding Absence has just experienced the nightmare scenario—an AI generated band that listed them as an influence recently surpassed their streaming figures on Spotify. Can it really get any darker than this?
“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,” frontman Lucas Woodland wrote on Twitter on September 30. “It’s shocking, it’s disheartening, it’s insulting—most importantly—it’s a wake up call.”
Woodland urged fans to “oppose AI music, or bands like us stop existing.” Meanwhile, Spotify recently shared its plans to crack down on AI music, claiming its removed 75 million tracks in the past year. This only seems to apply to “spammy” tracks and “slop.” Isn’t it all slop, though, when we really think about it?
The AI generated band, Bleeding Verse—which would maybe be a good name for an emo band in, like, 2008—has an Instagram page and a YouTube channel with about 2.8k subscribers since July 2025. On its social media, it’s described as using “AI-assisted instrumentation and vocals” to create music.
Holding Absence Vocalist Calls For Fans To “Oppose AI Music”
To make matters even more bleak, Bleeding Verse lists Holding Absence as an inspiration. Of course, here “inspired by” most likely translates to “scraped their style without permission.”
“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,” the description reads.
Bleeding Verse further describes itself as “an emotional post-hardcore band crafting cinematic soundscapes and heartbreak-heavy melodies.” There’s no indication of who exactly is behind the origin of this band, but it’s hard to imagine AI knowing anything about grief, identity, or healing.
There’s one album on Spotify called I Became What You Broke, along with an EP titled The Anatomy of Hurt. The album showed up in July 2025, and the band’s overall monthly listeners comes in at 897,349. Holding Absence, meanwhile, has a monthly total of 847,638.
Holding Absence’s top track, “Afterlife” from 2021, has a total stream count of 89,759,788. Bleeding Verse’s top track, “If You Loved Me Then,” racked up a total of 2,605,508 since July 2025.
The only real band in this conversation has been in the business since 2015, and the fact that a fake band can come in and draw this type of loyalty and attention is laughable. Who are you going to see on tour, the giant data farm where the AI lives? Absurd. Just listen to Holding Absence instead, you clowns.
Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images
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