Spotify listeners shun Australian music says Wrapped 2025

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Spotify listeners shun Australian music says Wrapped 2025

5 December 2025

The suggestion, made by The Daily Aus (TDA), is that few Australians listened to local music in 2025. On Spotify at least.

Zero local acts featured in Australia’s most listened-to artists, tracks, and albums on Spotify in 2025.

You’ll have to go to Instagram (IG) to read the slide card since TDA mainly publish their news reporting on IG, because their target audience, mainly Generation Z and some Millennials, consume news and current affairs reporting on the socials.

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, the world needs more niche blogs, and TDA, with their fine writing would slot nicely into news and current affairs niche. They do republish articles to their website, but sadly there is no RSS feed to subscribe to.

But back to the headline. I checked my 2025 Spotify Wrapped, and found Moon Motion, by Brisbane based Australian act First Beige (er, Instagram page), was my second most listened to track this year.

Tame Impala, Peking Duk, RÜFÜS DU SOL, and Vera Blue, are among Australian acts on my liked songs playlist. I can’t be the only person in Australia with local acts on their playlist.

It seems surprising to me that not one floated to the top, or at least near it, on the overall most-listened to lists. But maybe it’s some sort of Spotify quirk, and maybe next year we won’t be talking so much about them.

I also learned I have a music listening age of twenty-two (thank-you Spotify), why then all this talk about niche-blogs and RSS feeds? At my “age” I’m meant to be all in the socials.

Never Tear Us Apart, by INXS, tops all Australian Hottest 100

28 July 2025

The 1987 ballad by Australian rock act INXS claimed the number one spot in Triple J’s countdown of the Hottest 100 Australian Songs, last Saturday.

INXS rose to prominence during the 80’s and 90’s, when the late Micheal Hutchence, who died in 1997, fronted the act. The band last performed live in 2012, though they’ve not officially retired.

The top ten was not quite as old-school Australian rock as I thought it might be. Cold Chisel featured at numbers seven and eight, with Flame Trees (1984), and Khe Sanh (1978), respectively. Veteran singer Paul Kelly made it to number nine with his 1996 track How to Make Gravy.

Somebody That I Used to Know (2011) by Gotye, My Happiness (2000) by Powderfinger, Scar (2004) by Missy Higgins, Untouched (2007) by The Veronicas, and The Nosebleed Section (2003) by Hilltop Hoods, also charted in the top ten. Music recorded in the twenty-first century (which I’ll say includes 2000), ended up being well represented here.

Ben Lee suggests shock jocks host Triple J Hottest 100. No, not quite

19 July 2025

The shock jocks in question are Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O, who host a show — The Kyle and Jackie O Show — on a Sydney based commercial Australian radio station. The pair, especially Sandilands, often find themselves in hot water, on account of inappropriate and offensive comments made on air.

Last Wednesday, the Sydney Morning Herald published an article making the claim Australian musician Ben Lee had suggested Kyle and Jackie O host Triple J’s annual Hottest 100 countdown.

Triple J is a non-commerical Australian radio station with a focus on broadcasting new and independent local music, but mixed with non-Australian indie music. The Hottest 100 charts listeners’ favourite songs of the previous calendar year, regardless of country of origin.

But next Saturday, 26 July, Triple J will broadcast a one-off Hottest 100 of listener’s all-time favourite Australian only songs, as part of their fiftieth birthday celebrations.

In response to the Herald article, Lee posted a clarification on his Instagram page, saying Triple J’s Hottest 100 countdown, in its present format, should be broadcast by a commercial station. The jays, Lee explains, as a government funded station, should only support Australian music.

What I’m saying is let commercial radio handle servicing multi-national major labels — that’s their job. Triple J is taxpayer funded and I think those funds would be better used almost exclusively supporting Australian artists and culture.

I get where Lee is coming from here.

But the Hottest 100 is a draw card event for the jays, and likely introduces new listeners to the station, who in turn go on to hear the station’s predominately Australian music programming. On the other hand, as Lilya Murray, writing for Arc, a UNSW student publication, points out, representation of Australian artists in the Hottest 100, has been declining in recent years:

In 2024, only 29 Australian artists featured in the Hottest 100. This was a significant drop from 2023, which featured 52 local artists, and 57 from 2022.

Triple J has a mandate to broadcast a minimum of forty-percent Australian music, though the station claimed in 2019 they played closer to sixty-percent. Why then would fewer Australian musicians be featuring in the annual countdowns?

One suggestion here is that many Hottest 100 voters are not regular Triple J listeners, and are voting up music they’ve heard elsewhere. But I’m not sure you can stop people voting for non-Australian music, unless maybe it wasn’t aired on Triple J in the first place. After all, the Hottest 100 is meant to be a poll of Triple J listeners, not other stations.

But I doubt a one-hundred percent focus on local music, both played by Triple J, and included in the countdown, is the answer either. I’ve always enjoyed the jay’s mix of new and independent, and predominantly Australian music, and the annual Hottest 100 that results.

But more discussion about local music can only be a good thing, something the misleading notion that Kyle and Jackie O host the Hottest 100, might have precipitated.

Demolishing the AC/DC house, and what little rock history Australia has

18 January 2025

I’m not really a fan of the band that was formed in Sydney in 1973, and is still going strong, but it seems odd that the house where founders, brothers Angus and Malcolm Young used to live, and founded AC/DC, was not worthy of preserving. For those not in the know, AC/DC are probably Australia’s version of the Rolling Stones. But last month, the residence, in the inner-west Sydney suburb of Burwood, was bulldozed to make way for a high rise apartment block.

This might sound like over-development on steroids, but many parts of Australia, including Sydney, are experiencing accommodation shortages, and high density housing is one of the solutions. While numerous people, including the local municipal council, were aware of the house’s history, this was not enough to spare the property. Mind you, I’m not sure how the house could have been kept, and somehow integrated in the much needed residential development.

For more about the story of the “AC/DC house”, and its demolition, check out this short YouTube clip by Sydney Morning Herald writer, Tom Compagnoni.

Voting open for the 2024 Triple J Hottest 100 music poll

2 January 2025

The annual Hottest 100 countdown is part and parcel of the Australian music scene. Hosted by Australian indie radio station Triple J, since 1978, the poll gives listeners the chance to vote for their favourite music of the previous year.

The countdown itself takes place on Saturday 25 January 2025. I don’t always listen in on the day, in fact I’ve struggled to listen to much radio this last year, but the chart is great for new music discovery.

Tranquil Motion, a new album from All India Radio

31 December 2024

I’m talking about the Australian downtempo electronica music act, not the public broadcaster of India. In the hubbub of the silly season, I forgot to mention a new album, Tranquil Motion, was released earlier this month. Track it down on Bandcamp, or your favourite music streamer.

I could use some tranquil motion right now…

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Australian music, music

I’ll just be asking for you… Telstra’s 2023 Christmas advert

23 December 2024

Let’s flashback a year. Australian telecommunications company Telstra might have hit the right note with its Christmas theme advertising in 2023, by way of this ninety second commercial. The song excerpted in the ad is Oh Christmas, by Brisbane based duo Zefereli. Listen to the full length version here. It may not happen often, but sometimes the big corporates get it right.

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Australia, Australian music, music

Only one in five Australian musicians earn a full time income

4 April 2024

The latest Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) survey of the pay and work conditions of Australian musicians makes for grim reading. In particular, the stand-out finding that half of local musos earned less than six thousand dollars last year.

Six thousand dollars.

The adult minimum annual wage in Australia, based on earnings of $882 per week, and assuming payment covers fifty-two weeks of the year, is a shade under forty-six thousand Australian dollars. Only twenty percent of musicians said they made a full time income from their work.

Many musicians needed to work several jobs, often perform at shows unpaid, and seldom receive superannuation payments. In 2022, the NSW Labor party promised to pass laws ensuring musicians performing at publicly funded events, receive a minimum payment of two-hundred-and-fifty dollars.

At least it’s a start, but I think the findings of the MEAA survey make it glaringly obvious: more support is needed for the performing arts in Australia.

Book of Life, a memoir by Australian musician Deborah Conway

22 July 2023

Melbourne based Australian musician Deborah Conway has been writing and recording rock and pop music in her inimitable style for over four decades. Her hits include It’s Only the Beginning, Alive and Brilliant, and Will You Miss Me When You’re Sober? In 1992 Conway won an ARIA award in the best female artist category for her album, Strings of Pearls.

But Conway is more than a musician. Other claims to fame include a role in the John Clark made film Running On Empty, and some eye-catching work as a model. In October this year her memoir, Book of Life, will be published by Allan & Unwin. This is a title not only for fans of Conway, but anyone with an interest in Australian music history:

If you have listened to any of Deborah Conway’s songs and were half curious about the origins; if you have ever wondered whatever happened to that chick who covered herself in Nutella and was photographed shovelling cream cakes in to her mouth; if you gave a nanosecond of thought to whose bare arse adorned the giant Billboard ads for Bluegrass jeans in the 1980’s and how much someone could get paid to do that; if you liked Tracey Mann’s vocals in The Takeaways but asked yourself, “did she really sing them?”; if you were a movie buff who thought Running On Empty was a classic BEFORE it became a cult phenomenon and need behind the scenes gossip, now’s your chance to find out all this and so much more.

Music streaming has filled the Australian charts with old songs

11 July 2023

TikTok has a lot to answer for. It has launched the careers of musicians who recording companies at first refused to blink sideways at, and revived the popularity of some acts who might be considered to have had their day. Fleetwood Mac and Kate Bush, I’m looking at you.

But TikTok is not what ails the Australian music industry at present. It’s the lack of Australian material charting at the moment. Incredibly, so far this year, the Australian top fifty album charts have included more recordings solely by American singer Taylor Swift, than Australian acts combined.

Further, the majority of these Swift albums aren’t exactly new. Because how could an artist release numerous new albums simultaneously, that would all be of chart topping quality? Some of Swift’s albums were made years ago. Nonetheless, newer music by Australian artists has been edged out.

And it all comes down to streaming. While the music charts used to include the sales of records, cassettes, CDs, and digital downloads, they now include music that is streamed. Which seems to be old music. And is this creating the situation where much older music now features in the charts, to the detriment of Australian musicians struggling for recognition.

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