Why Australia’s “Grammy-rush” is good news for local listening

Multiple Australian artists are seeking to extend the country’s Grammy hot streak, with Amyl & The Sniffers, Tame Impala and RÜFÜS DU SOL each receiving nominations in Sunday’s awards. Recent years have included big wins for Kylie Minogue, Tame Impala and RÜFÜS DU SOL, plus a slew of nominations for local heroes Troye Sivan and The Kid LAROI, among many others.

It’s a big change from previous decades, when our artists were rarely lauded at music’s equivalent of the Oscars. There was not a single major Grammy win by an Australian in the 33 years between Men At Work (1982) and Keith Urban (2005). While Wolfmother (2006), Gotye (2012), and Flume (2016) are among those who have since received gongs, seeing multiple Aussie nominees has only become the norm in the last few years.

This “Grammy-rush” is symptomatic of a rare good news story for Australian music, at a time when bad news abounds. While Australia Institute research shows that Australian fans are consuming less local music, international audiences are demanding more of it.

Aussies are now headlining the world’s biggest festivals in unprecedented numbers. DJs like Dom Dolla, Fisher, and Alison Wonderland are filling the world’s biggest electronic dance music venues, while new artists in genres like hardcore metal and hip hop are attracting bigger audiences overseas than they are here at home. The Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) reported a 14.8% annual increase in 2024/25 overseas performance royalties to almost $100 million – ­more than double pre-pandemic levels. With our music ecosystem shrinking domestically, these growing export earnings are now doubly important to local bottom lines and continued investment.

Recent research by former Spotify Chief Economist Will Page and the Australia Institute’s Dr Morgan Harrington shows that steep declines in domestic music streaming are not simply due to global competition. In less populous, English-speaking countries like Australia, Big Tech’s language-based algorithms typically favour American hits, so local content is handicapped. There is clearly nothing wrong with our musical “products”, as evidenced by all the offshore success stories. But an uneven playing field here at home is causing domestic “market failure”, which leaves our kids singing more American songs.

Interestingly, a closer look at the streaming data which underpinned this research suggests that growing export activity may also be impacting what the apps are “feeding” us here at home. Page and Harrington flagged a net decline of 34 Australians in this country’s top 1000 most-streamed artists between 2021 and 2024. Across that period 47 household names fell off the list including Divinyls, Mental As Anything, Delta Goodrem, and one of the PM’s favourite bands, Spiderbait. Meanwhile, 13 new Aussie acts moved up into the top 1000. None of these “trend defiers” are as widely known as the older names they replaced, and they span a broad musical range, but they share one thing in common: significant offshore followings. Leading the pack are Royel Otis and Cyril, who have both enjoyed big international success, but close behind them are emerging artists like Luude, The 046, Hollow Coves, Vacations, DJ Noiz and Angie McMahon, who have also built sizeable overseas audiences. Their offshore popularity seems to be driving more domestic streams as well; let’s call it the boomerang effect.

Page and Harrington’s work explained that the Large Language Models (LLMs) which underpin current algorithms “can read language but cannot (or at least do not) read maps”, so it makes sense that garnering more overseas fans would cause apps to “feed” these trend defying artists to English speakers everywhere, thus causing more Australians to “dine” on them too.

The lesson for musicians – and potentially creatives in all fields – seems clear: export or perish. The days of building a local following for several years before making your first international foray are over. If you want your next-door neighbour to discover your creative work then, contrary as it may seem, you may first need to get “liked” or “followed” by lots of people in more populous parts of the world who happen to speak your neighbour’s language.

Of course, this is much easier said than done. Digital technologies – such as online distribution, and cheaper recording and filming – have lowered many barriers for cultural exports, which is great but double-edged. Over a million new tracks are now posted online each week, so cutting through that digital din to build a fanbase still takes big talent, savvy, determination, and financial backing.

The Australia Institute’s research has already called for increased government support of overseas tours, along the lines used by Canada. But the “boomerang effect” may provide further justification for such export-oriented policies. In addition to obvious economic benefits, it seems – counterintuitively – that growing overseas audiences for our artists might also help us address growing Americanisation here at home. Music Australia and Sounds Australia have already played pivotal roles in some of the export success stories noted above, as have various State Government initiatives. But greater resourcing and continued careful targeting could multiply such early payoffs.

Of course, these issues go well beyond music. Since the social media boom, our consumption of most Australian creative work has been supplanted by American content. Local TV networks, magazines, and news websites have lost eyeballs, and therefore advertising revenue, to Meta and Google. Local films are crowded out on Netflix, Apple, and Amazon. Australia’s drift towards a more American culture is evident everywhere. The Commonwealth’s 2023 National Cultural Policy which addressed this problem was called “Revive”. If current trends continue the next iteration may need to be called “Resuscitate”.

Music has been a canary in the coal mine on other digital challenges, like piracy and AI, due to smaller file sizes and younger, tech-savvy customers. Perhaps Australian music’s battle with “the apps” and their algorithmic distortions can also be a harbinger for other cultural industries.

Former PM Paul Keating famously observed, “when you change the government, you change the country”. But the reverse is also true: culture begets politics. Does Australia really want to passively accept a more American culture at this historic moment, given that it will lead us towards an even more American politics?

Late last year, a hardcore band called Speed won the inaugural NSW Music Prize – a Minns government initiative. As their name implies, the group’s severe sounds would not be everybody’s idea of fun, but their multicultural background and songs calling out anti-Asian racism speak to contemporary local experiences in ways no American artist could ever do, and no LLM could ever detect.

Aptly, Speed came to prominence on a compilation album titled This Is Australia (Vol. 2). Like many of their peers, seed funding from government-backed organisations is helping this punk/metal band make global waves, including a 2025 performance at the world-famous Coachella Festival in the US. Provocative, distinctive, proudly Australian songs and stories like theirs will need lots more exposure to reverse our current cultural retreat.

We might not be hearing them much here at home just yet, thanks to those skewed apps. But as the Grammys show, Aussie trails are being blazed around the world – with benefits for all of us here at home.

John Watson is a director at the Australia Institute, a Patron of the Association of Artist Managers (AAM) and a former director of Support Act, an industry charity providing relief to arts workers. John’s music management firm has represented leading Australian artists since 1995.