AI Country Track ‘Walk My Walk’ Tops Billboard Chart

AI act Breaking Rust has topped a US Billboard chart with ‘Walk My Walk’ as concerns over AI’s role in music escalate.

An AI-generated country song has reached the top of a major US Billboard chart, marking another moment in the rapid rise of synthetic music. ‘Walk My Walk’, credited to the AI act Breaking Rust, is currently sitting at Number One on Billboard’s Country Digital Songs sales chart. The track surged to the top after gaining more than three million Spotify streams in under a month, and it now leads Spotify’s ‘Viral 50’ chart in the US as well.

Breaking Rust’s growing presence on streaming platforms hasn’t stopped there. Another track from the project, ‘Livin’ on Borrowed Time’, has hit fifth place on Spotify’s Viral 50 Chart as well, surpassing four million plays. Despite the sudden success, the creator behind Breaking Rust remains anonymous. A TikTok account associated with the project has nearly 200,000 followers, and ‘Walk My Walk’ has already appeared in more than 150,000 user videos.

This surge of AI-driven success echoes earlier cases throughout the year. AI act The Velvet Sundown pulled in roughly 400,000 monthly Spotify listeners in July shortly after launching. A spokesperson later revealed the project was intentionally designed as a hoax aimed at “the media,” claiming viral playlist placement amplified the numbers. Although, whether the spokesperson is real still remains a mystery given multiple back-and-forth releases claiming the statement was, and wasn’t, a hoax.

At the listener level, research suggests most people have trouble spotting the difference between human and AI-generated music. A recent report from French streaming service Deezer found that 97 per cent of respondents “can’t tell the difference.” The same survey shows trust in AI remains low, with only 19 per cent saying they feel confident in the technology. Meanwhile, 51 per cent believe AI in music production could lead to low-quality, formulaic results.

Industry concerns continue to mount. A recent study projects that workers in music stand to lose a quarter of their income to AI within the next four years. In response to growing misuse, Spotify announced in September that it had removed 75 million “spammy tracks” while targeting impersonators as part of its ‘Spotify Strengthens AI Protections For Artists, Songwriters, And Producers’ initiative. The move followed reports of AI-generated songs being uploaded to profiles of deceased artists without consent.

It seems like AI-generated music is (unfortunately) here to stay, for the time being. Whether crackdowns from platforms and governments make a dent in things remains to be seen, but for now, it looks like listeners either can’t tell the difference or don’t particularly care as long as the music is a banger – of course, what exactly constitutes a ‘banger’ remains highly individual, beyond Parks and Recreation‘s Tom Haverford’s (AKA Aziz Ansari’s) definition.