Australia Is The Third-Largest Market For Country Music

Luminate’s mid-year music report has delivered some fascinating findings, including streaming numbers rising by 55% in Australia from this time last year.

But if you’ve been looking at Australia’s ARIA Albums Chart or the Singles Chart lately, you’ve likely noticed something else: country music is currently booming down under.

At the time of writing, Morgan Wallen is #6 on the ARIA Albums Chart with One Thing At A Time. The album has been on the chart for 18 weeks.

Taylor Swift, who admittedly hasn’t released a country song in a while, has six albums in the top ten of the chart – tomorrow evening, we’ll find out how high one of her country albums, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), will land after the pre-orders of streams of its first week have been counted.

At #21 is Luke Combs’ Gettin’ Old, an album that’s likely dropped a few places due to the Taylor Swift domination and other international pop acts snapping up spots. His 2017 debut album, This One’s For You, is a spot underneath after 265 weeks on the chart.

Australia’s Brooke McClymont & Adam Eckersley have released their album, Up, Down & Sideways, for a #26 debut on the chart, with Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album up four places to #31 after 103 weeks on the ARIA Chart.

Outside of albums, Morgan Wallen (Last Night) and Luke Combs (Fast Car) hold #4 and #5 on the Singles Chart. It’s fair to say that country music is having a moment in Australia.

So, Luminate’s findings make complete sense. According to the Mid-Year Report of music listeners’ habits, Australia is currently the third-biggest market for country music and second-largest if you remove the US, sitting behind Canada.

What’s truly astounding, though, is the number of Aussies consuming country music. The report has found that from the beginning of the year to 29 June, Australians have streamed artists in the Top 500 US Country Songs over 1.1 billion times.

Overall, country music has hit a new peak across all its markets - on 1 June, on-demand plays of country music reached 2.26 billion streams. Digital Music News notes that Wallen’s One Thing At A Time makes up 9.6% of all country on-demand audio streaming since its 3 March 2023 release.

You can find the report’s complete findings here.