Foreign artists have once again dominated Australians\u2019 musical choices, with Taylor Swift the most streamed artist in this country for the third year in a row and Bad Bunny the most streamed globally for the fourth time.<\/p>\n
The top five artists in Australia, according to Spotify\u2019s annual Wrapped report, were Taylor Swift, Drake, Morgan Wallen, The Weeknd and Billie Eilish.<\/p>\n
The most-streamed track between January 1 and the mid-November cut-off for tallying was Ordinary<\/em>, from American Alex Warren, who emerged on TikTok as a member of the Hype House collective in 2019. The song was also an ARIA chart-topper, and hit the No.1 spot in 30 countries, and sat atop the Billboard Hot 100 for 10 consecutive weeks.<\/p>\n The top 10 list of \u201cmost discovered artists\u201d \u2013 artists being streamed by Spotify users for the first time in 2025 \u2013 was dominated by acts from the US (sombr, Alex Warren, Ravyn Lenae, Doechii), Britain (Chrystal, Lola Young, Olivia Dean), and Korea, with the animated musical K-Pop Demon Hunters<\/em> providing two entrants in HUNTR\/X and Saja Boys.<\/p>\n ROS\u00c9, who was born in New Zealand and migrated to Australia as a seven-year-old before moving to Korea, where her parents are from, at 15 to join K-Pop outfit Blackpink, was the only artist with an Australian connection on the top 10 most discovered list.<\/p>\n The results add weight to the findings of a research paper released by the Australia Institute last week, Reversing the Decline in Australian Music<\/em><\/a>, in which it was asserted that \u201cstreaming platforms have turned discovery into a global contest in which Australian artists singing in English are competing with the vast American catalogue\u201d.<\/p>\n The paper\u2019s authors claimed \u201cthe presence of Australian artists has been declining, both in terms of the total number of artists, and the number of streams\u201d and that \u201cAustralia is now the global poster child for what \u2018market failure\u2019 looks like in recorded music\u201d.<\/p>\n While the five most-streamed songs in Australia this year were released in 2024 or 2025, only one of the five most-streamed Australian songs \u2013 Sonny Fodera\u2019s Somedays<\/em> \u2013 fell within that timeframe. Kid Laroi\u2019s Nights Like This<\/em> was released in 2023, Vance Joy\u2019s Riptide<\/em> (the most-streamed Australian song of the year) came out in 2013, The Temper Trap\u2019s Sweet Disposition<\/em> was released in 2008 and Crowded House\u2019s Don\u2019t Dream It\u2019s Over<\/em> \u2013 the second most-streamed Australian track of the year \u2013 dates to 1986.<\/p>\n The issue, says Ben Watts, Spotify\u2019s head of music for Australia and New Zealand, is how crowded the playing field is on streaming platforms.<\/p>\n \u201cYes, Australian artists are competing with international artists, but they\u2019re also competing with the history of music, because the audience essentially has the choice of most music that was ever released,\u201d says Watts.<\/p>\n How to make Australian music more visible while still serving subscribers what they want to hear is, he adds, something \u201cwe\u2019re constantly talking, as an industry, about. We all want Australian music to continue to grow, both locally and internationally, but how that happens, there\u2019s a lot of discussion about. And it will continue, because we\u2019re all looking for the same thing, which is to grow Australian music.\u201d<\/p>\n If discovery of new Australian music remains a problem, streaming platforms such as Spotify have been a boon for heritage acts. INXS sat at No.5 on the local album chart with the 1987 album Kick<\/em>, while AC\/DC were at No.4 with Back In Black<\/em>, which came out in 1980 and is the second-highest selling album of all time.<\/p>\n