Report: Australian Artists Only Rank 9.2 Per Cent With Music Streaming Fans

Australian music only ranks #3 with Australian music streamers, according to a new deep-dive report from US-based research company Luminate. Australian acts only make up 9.2 per cent of what’s streamed.

Content from the United States heavily predominates, with 61.2 per cent of the top 10,000 artists streaming share in Australia. UK music is 16.6 per cent. In fourth place, after Australia, are Canada (5 per cent), India (1.7 per cent), and South Korea (1.5 per cent).

The Luminate report covered Asia Pacific, Australia, and New Zealand. Scott Ryan, its Executive Vice President of Commercial Music Consumption, Insights, and Quansic, says that seven markets in this region “are outperforming global and ex-US audio streaming growth.”

Quoting Australia’s 10.2 per cent growth this year from 2023, he calls it “one of several markets in APAC+ANZ that has notched double-digit audio streaming growth in 2024. This strong performance underscores the country’s increasing embrace of DSP music consumption. 

“As Australian audiences become more engaged with streaming platforms, artists from outside the market have found success tapping into this fast-growing segment of the global music industry.”

This low support for homegrown music on streaming reflects a similar decline in the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) charts.

A study by Sydney’s University of Technology PhD student Tim Kelly found that the share of Australian and New Zealand acts in the Top 100 singles declined from an average of 16 per cent between 2000 and 2016 to around 10 per cent in 2017—23 and a mere 2.5 per cent in 2023.

On the album charts, the decline for ANZ acts went from an average of 29 per cent in 2000—2016, to 18 per cent in 2017—23 to 4 per cent in 2023.

The latest Luminate data spells more trouble for domestic music. The local streaming market might be growing, but the play of Australian and American music is falling. Instead, fans are sourcing from other countries, with Germany and France leading, then India and the Netherlands.

The most streamed German artists in Australia are Milky Chance, Lunax, Zedd, Robin Schulz, and Rammstein. The most streamed French acts are David Guetta, Daft Punk, DJ Snake, M83, and Bob Sinclar.

Domestic Support

Most of the Asian markets support their domestic acts. In Japan, for instance, 71.6 per cent of streams are their own. It’s 70 per cent in India and 40 per cent in Indonesia.

Such support has translated into exports for many of these markets. According to Spotify, 8,700 of India's acts were added to local and global playlists. India amassed over 1 trillion streams in 2023, according to Luminate, and is tipped to seriously challenge the US as the world’s biggest music streaming market in the next few years.

K-Pop now generates almost 8 billion streams per month around the world. The band BTS is worth over $5 billion a year to South Korea’s economy—half a per cent of the country’s entire economy.

It’s little wonder that the Australian music industry has been pushing for quotas in the playlists of major streaming players. APRA AMCOS called for a minimum 25 per cent quota—the same figure that bounds commercial radio stations. The more Australian acts get repeated on playlists, the more familiar they become.

Federal Arts Minister Tony Burke suggested that music streaming services operating locally be forced to change their algorithms to ensure that Australian artists and songs get more prominence. 

“Play an Australian album on one of those and have the feature on that it keeps choosing music for you after, and by the third or fourth song, if you haven’t gone to North America in the choices it’s taken you to, then you’re getting a different experience to what I get,” he said.

“The streaming services don’t only have available what you might choose – they also push music to you. Getting inside those algorithms, and getting a better deal for Australian music, will make a huge difference for Australian artists.”

Obviously, more than doubling music exposure could make a vast difference. Market leader Spotify’s Loud & Clear report earlier this year said that in 2023, more than 4,000 Aussie artists were added to its editorial playlists and discovered by first-time listeners more than 2.7 billion times.

Also, in 2023, more than 80 per cent of all royalties generated by Australian artists on Spotify were from outside the country, with Brazil, Mexico, and Germany emerging as new export markets for Australian artists.

Mat Levey of Amazon Music said when it launched in Australia in 2018, “35 of Amazon’s 150 playlists featured exclusively Australian content. In total, 75 per cent of Amazon’s playlists contain Australian music…featuring popular and emerging artists.”

According to Luminate, the growth of streaming in the Asia Pacific is fuelled mostly by Gen Z. In Indonesia, 86 per cent of them stream music, and 68 per cent in Japan. But in the Philippines, the thrust comes from 88 per cent of Millennial Filipinos.

Support for local music comes from where fans most discover new music. In Indonesia, 78 per cent find it from video audio streaming, 74 per cent of streamers in the Philippines make their discovery on social media and 52 per cent in Japan from television.

In the last 12 months, more Japanese music lovers were also turning on to acts from Brazil, Germany, Australia, and France. 

The Luminate analysis didn’t publish specific data on Australian discoveries. However, a September 2024 report by The Australian Institute about young people’s attitude to live music stated that 61 per cent of Australians aged 16 to 25 turned to music streaming services to find new music.

Following were YouTube (54 per cent), TikTok (52 per cent), friends or family (47 per cent), other social media (41 per cent), MTV and movies (32 per cent), radio (27 per cent), video games (21 per cent), and attending music events (21 per cent).

Elsewhere, it is forecast that by the end of 2024, the Australian music streaming market will reach revenues of US$418.90 million, and America’s will reach US$17,990.00 million.

How much of that filters through to Australian creative folks remains to be seen.