Spotify put out a report this week offering lots of positive stats on how Australian music performs on its service in that country.
However, another new report – published this morning by think-tank The Australia Institute – begs to differ. And it’s co-written by the former chief economist at Spotify, Will Page.
The report studied the top 10,000 artists being streamed in Australia between 2021 and 2024, to analyse how many of them were local and how many international.
“The presence of Australian artists has been declining, both in terms of the total number of artists, and the number of streams. In 2021, 932 in every 10,000 artists streamed were Australian, but by 2024 that had fallen to just 773 in 10,000,” is its main finding.
“Over the same period, streamshare – the number of times those Australian artists inside their top 10,000 artists have been streamed – declined from 12% to 8% (a 30% drop off). And a closer look at the numbers shows that many of Australia’s most streamed artists are ‘heritage’ acts – in 2024, Australia’s most streamed local act was The Wiggles.”
The report puts its finger on why Australia and other non-US English-speaking countries are having these problems, while other non-Anglo markets (Italy, Germany, France, Denmark and more) are seeing a surge in streams for their local artists.
“The algorithms used by streaming services are partly based on language, which means people listening in a certain language are recommended content in that language,” claims the report.
“The same process that is working in favour of smaller national languages is working against countries in which English is the dominant language (other than the USA). Artists from countries like Australia, the UK, and Canada must now compete against an avalanche of American superstars (and each other) for an audience on the same handful of streaming services.”
The report makes two suggestions for how this can be tackled. First, correcting the trend towards recommendation algorithms driven by “machine learning abstractions without explicit grounding in communities… all ‘rock’ sung in English sounds the same to the machines”.
It suggests that re-upping investment in “locally based content curators” would be one move, but also more government support for Australian artists to tour internationally – which will build their fanbases and thus give them more juice in the streaming algorithms.
They’re two constructive suggestions, and – as the report co-authored by Page and The Australian Institute’s Morgan Harrington flags – Spotify’s ‘Turn Up AUS’ campaign has already taken a step in the direction of more-focused local curation.
We’re covering the debate in Australia because it has global relevance: certainly to those other Anglo markets whose industries are fretting about local music’s streaming performance.
Today’s report makes it clear that Australians are listening to less Australian music. But Spotify’s report found that 61% of listeners “are satisfied with the amount of Australian music available and accessible to them” on streaming.
This isn’t a contradiction: those people don’t see a problem, which is why Spotify’s current Top 20 weekly songs chart in Australia includes tracks by 10 North American artists, two British acts, the cast of KPop Demon Hunters and US/UK hybrid Fleetwood Mac.
(Wait, what? Yes, ‘Dreams’ is having another moment, which is another story…)
However, if a study designed to present a positive picture shows that 61% of Australians as satisfied with the amount of local music accessible through streaming, this means 39% are unsatisfied.
That’s a proportion that points to strong reasons for DSPs and the music industry to put their heads together on more ways to work together to promote and support local artists.
This issue can be an argument, especially when governments get involved. DSPs get very defensive about the idea of playlist quotes or forced algorithm-modification. But this issue can also be a positive spur for collaboration between the streaming services and the music industry.
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