Surprising Results For Biggest Aus Acts On Spotify Globally

Spotify figures have begun to make the rounds as 2022 enters its final weeks, with the streaming giant unleashing its annual ‘Wrapped’ last week, detailing exactly what people across the globe – and Australia – have been listening to most this year.

A number of lists were unveiled as part of the breakdown, including who was streamed most across the globe (Bad Bunny at #1) as well as which local artists Aussies are listening to the most (The Kid LAROI at #1), but what about the most-streamed Aussie artists globally this year?

Taking a look at 2022 as a whole, the Top 5 isn’t too out of the ordinary:

1. The Kid LAROI
2. AC/DC
3. 5 Seconds Of Summer
4. Tame Impala
5. Troye Sivan

However, when you zoom out and look at Spotify listeners over the past month, expanding to the Top 20 artists, that’s when some interesting trends arise.

In November, Sia was the most-streamed Aussie artist globally, followed by The Kid LAROI at #2, AC/DC at #3, Dean Lewis at #4 and Tame Impala at #5.

Aussie duo Shouse, who round out 2022 after recently dropping Never Let You Go with Jason Derulo, come in at #10, racking up more listeners than Kylie Minogue at #12, while Vacations (#18) have more listeners than Fisher (#19) and Empire Of The Sun (#20).

Zooming out a little further than that, Rick Springfield is more popular than Nick Cave, Ballarat-born singer-songwriter Larissa Lambert is bigger than Peking Duk, and Isaiah Firebrace has more streamers than Jessica Mauboy.

November’s Top 20:

1. Sia
2. The Kid LAROI
3. AC/DC
4. Dean Lewis
5. Tame Impala
6. 5 Seconds Of Summer
7. Troye Sivan
8. Vance Joy
9. Tones & I
10. Shouse
11. Chase Atlantic
12. Kylie Minogue
13. Olivia Newton-John
14. Timmy Trumpet
15. Flume
16. Masked Wolf
17. INXS
18. Vacations
19. FISHER
20. Empire Of The Sun

Last month, The Music published a two-part series on Aussie artists leaving the country to find success, with Vacations drummer Joey Van Lier speaking with Bryget Chrisfield after the band had returned home from a massive US tour.

It was in 2016 that Vacations noticed “a significant amount of streams happening” for their song Daydreaming from 2015’s Days EP.

“Then it never stopped, really, and just kept sort of growing and growing and growing, and we definitely noticed that there was a lot of interest in the US, in particular, and in South America, in Mexico," he said. "And then it really, really astronomically spiked around the time the pandemic started.”

Also taking part in the two-part series, Darwin-born artist VASSY, who just cracked the Top 50 of last month’s Spotify figures, said she had to leave Australia to pursue a sustainable career in music, and is now doing extremely well in the States after relocating to LA a decade ago.

In November, VASSY performed in front of a 20,000+ capacity crowd as the halftime entertainment headliner during a Denver Nuggets NBA Basketball game, not realising – until she read an article on Billboard – that she was only the second Australian artist in NBA history to do so (after Cody Simpson, who performed Australia’s national anthem at a Cleveland Cavaliers game in 2016).

She became the first Australian artist to hit #1 on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart with a solo song (We Are Young) and she’s since topped that chart many more times: 2014’s Hustlin’ (feat. Crazibiza & Dave Audé), both Lost (with Afrojack feat. Oliver Rosa) and Nothing To Lose in 2017, 2018’s Doomsday (with Lodato), 2019’s Concrete Heart (with Disco Fries) and 2021’s Chase (feat. Bonka). She also collaborated with David Guetta on 2014’s Bad.