Country music's new chart-topping star isn't a cowboy, quite frankly, and nor is it a human. It's an "AI-powered" artist, and it just rode all the way to number one on Billboard's Country Digital Song Sales Chart.
Despite the internet's protests, 'Walk My Walk' by Breaking Rust landed the top spot for the second week in a row, making history along the way. With more than two million monthly listeners on Spotify and 22,000 subscribers on YouTube, Breaking Rust has eight songs available to stream which are credited to one mysterious figure by the name of Aubierre Rivaldo Taylor, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The artist has a song on Spotify's 'Viral 50' chart in the US, and a TikTok page for the brand currently has almost 200,000 followers.
The rise of AI bands
In June this year, a band titled 'The Velvet Sundown' garnered over 400,000 monthly listeners and gained attention for their four-piece psychedelic rock act. After their questionable rise to fame, it later emerged that they were entirely AI-generated, from their music to promotional images and even backstory.
When NME launched their own investigation into the band's origins, they found the artists essentially emerged from thin air after appearing on Spotify with no fanfare, no marketing material, no social media, and a slew of seeming AI-generated images.
Further fueling the speculation at the time, the band released two albums in the same month, despite not having been around for very long. Both share similar covers, both were released in June 2025, and both feature identical track counts and run times within a minute of each other.
Spotify's crackdown against AI slop
It wasn't long before music moguls like Spotify began to effect guardrails against such AI-generated 'art.'
In September this year, the streaming giant said it was pushing back against the rapid rise of AI in the industry. In a blog post announcing updated rules and regulations around artificial intelligence, the company described the pace of AI’s advancement as “unsettling.”
Even though Spotify has embraced AI in many areas on their own platform, from launching its AI DJ to relying on AI-driven algorithms across the service, it stressed the importance of maintaining balance.
“At its best, AI is unlocking incredible new ways for artists to create music and for listeners to discover it. At its worst, AI can be exploited by bad actors and content farms to mislead listeners, flood the ecosystem with ‘slop,’ and undermine genuine artists working to build their careers,” the post stated.
'Breaking Rust' climbing the Billboard charts shows just how quickly AI-made music is moving, and why it's attracted so much attention.
But Spotify's crackdown is a reminder that not all AI output is created equal. As the tech gets better (and weirder), streaming platforms are trying to make sure we get the good stuff without in low-effort slop.
It's a messy moment for music and all art forms, but one thing's clear: the AI era isn't slowing down; it's just that artists, listeners, and platforms are scrambling to keep up.
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