Australian Music is Being Killed by Streaming Algorithms, says Report

A report by Australian thinktank The Australia Institute has revealed that the amount of Australian content being consumed on streaming services by local audiences is declining.

The findings:

• The ‘Reversing the Decline of Australian Music’ report was compiled by respected global music economist and ex-Spotify employee Will Page.

• It studied the top 10,000 artists being streamed in Australia from 2021 to 2024.

• In 2021, 932 in every 10,000 artists streamed were Australian.

• By 2024 the number had fallen to 773.

• Over the same period, the number of times the Australian artists inside the top 10,000 were streamed declined from 12% to 8%, a 30% drop off.

• Many of the Australian artists were heritage, with The Wiggles being the most streamed Australian artist of 2024.

The issue:

• The report reasons that algorithms used by streaming services are partly based on language.

• Therefore, people listening in a certain language are recommended content in that language.

• This works in favor of smaller national languages, which helps explain why local content is at an all-time high in countries such as France and Germany.

• English-speaking territories such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, however, have to compete against American and British superstars for an audience on the streaming services.

Recommendations:

• The report suggests two options for reversing the decline.

• One is to correct 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.”

• The second is to invest in local content curators.

• Also mentioned is upping government support for Australian artists to tour internationally, which will help build their fanbases and give them more weight in the streaming algorithms.

What they said:

• An excerpt from the report: “Australia is now the global poster child for what ‘market failure’ looks like in recorded music. A vicious cycle risks taking root, with increasingly fewer domestic success stories resulting in less domestic investment, meaning even lower chances of future success. Intervention is required to stop the rot... If algorithms recognise language but not nationality, it may explain why most non-English speaking markets are enjoying a surge in the popularity of domestic artists while English-speaking countries outside of America are not.”