Aussie artists can’t get on the ARIA charts but global fans stream them in the billions

See the list of Aussie stars with billions of streams for their music overseas even as local fans turn off homegrown songs and albums.

Kathy McCabe

@McCabeRadar

5 min read

January 19, 2025 - 10:43AM

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Chase Atlantic are the biggest Australian band you’ve never heard of.

When brothers Mitchel and Clinton Cave and Christian Anthony were in the middle of their sold-out homecoming tour in December, they had to pop by the US consulate to renew their “exceptional talent” visa.

During their interview, the American agent asked them “why are you guys ‘exceptionally talented?’”

“I didn’t know to say. So we told him we had eight billion streams, we’re in the top 500 bands if the world, 18 million monthly listeners ... I didn’t want to have to sing him a song,” Anthony said.

Australian band Chase Atlantic have eight billion streams for their music. Picture: Jordan Kelsey Knight / Supplied

Eight. Billion. Streams. And yet Chase Atlantic, along with the majority of Australian artists in the streaming era, struggle to be recognised on their own ARIA charts at home.

Their fourth record, Lost in Heaven, was the first release in their decade-long career to crack the ARIA Top 50 albums, debuting at No.2 in November.

This week the 2024 ARIA end-of-year charts showed only three local artist records made the Top 100 albums and five homegrown songs cracked the Top 100 singles of the year.

The Aussies whose records were streamed - and sold a lot of vinyl copies - to get them into the Top 100 alongside Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and Sabrina Carpenter were Cold Chisel, The Kid Laroi and INXS.

The Kid Laroi is one of our biggest musical exports. Picture: Rohan Kelly

Over on the Top 100 singles, the highest Aussie entry was Vance Joy with Riptide, which has been a staple on playlists and radio airwaves for 11 years. That song is closing in one a whopping three billion streams on Spotify.

Despite the lack of presence on the local charts, many Australian artists are indeed being streamed in impressive numbers overseas.

According to Spotify, the top three local artist exports in 2024 - the acts whose tracks were streamed most overseas - were AC/DC, Kid LAROI and Chase Atlantic. The trio’s biggest markets were the US, Brazil, Indonesia, Philippines and the UK.

The Chase Atlantic trio were discovered by Joel and Benji Madden in 2015 and signed to their management company, basing themselves in Los Angeles.

During the band’s December tour, their first in two years, they stepped up to play Australia’s biggest arenas. So there is no lack of demand for them at the Australian concert box office.

The trio aren’t sure why there has been a disconnection between the local music industry ecosystem and the fans.

Multi-award winner Troye Sivan has achieved global success with his pop earworms. Picture: Christian Gilles.

“The success of Aussie music overseas is such a cool story but they’ve just been sleeping on us a bit; it can take a while for that to filter back home and get the support back there from Triple J or radio or TV,” Anthony said.

“So it was nice on the tour to get some of that attention back home.”

Many of Australia’s biggest artists on streaming platforms have overseas bases including Sia, AC/DC, the Kid Laroi, Tame Impala, Vance Joy, Troye Sivan, 5 Seconds of Summer and Flume.

Global pop hitmaker Sia is the Australian stream queen with more than 26 billion plays and 79 million monthly listeners for her enviable hit parade on Spotify alone. Apple Music does not publicly disclose their data.

Sia is the Aussie streaming queen with more than 26 billion plays for her songs. Picture: Supplied

Artists will occasionally cite their total number of streams across all platforms in interviews or press releases; Chase Atlantic’s eight billion total streams includes more than six billion on Spotify.

Her last recorded entry on the ARIA singles charts was in 2022 when her single Unstoppable, which appeared on the 2016 album This is Acting, went viral on TikTok and soundtracked television commercials. It only reached 115 on the ARIA chart yet has amassed more than 1.5 billion Spotify streams.

It may not be surprising that AC/DC is second on the list. But it should be, because the Aussie rock institution, which sold 200 million records before the dawn of music’s digital era, held out against the streaming tide until 2015 when they finally gave permission for their catalogue to be uploaded to the platforms.

Rock legends AC/DC remain one of the world’s most popular bands in the digital era. Picture: Supplied

They now have more than 13 billion plays on Spotify and four songs with more than one billion streams each - Highway to Hell, Back in Black, Thunderstruck and You Shook Me All Night Long.

Their three latest records, Black Ice (2008), Rock or Bust (2014) and Power Up (2020) have all debuted at No.1 on the local album charts and their top streaming songs appear regularly on ARIA’s Australian Artist Top 20 singles.

The Kid Laroi’s impact on the global pop charts is undeniable with the singer’s 12 billion streams not only due to the quality of his songs but the influence of social media on maintaining and growing his fanbase.

That direct relationship between artist and fan requires as much creativity and toil as the long hours in the studio and many music-makers find it tough to keep feeding the social media beast to sate the appetite of fans for content, even when they have a full-time employee tasked with managing their channels.

Tame Impala leader Kevin Parker has taken the band to big things overseas. Picture: Supplied/Dana Trippe

Other artists who have hit the zenith of their careers in the streaming era include 5 Seconds of Summer (11 billion Spotify plays) and Tame Impala and Troye Sivan (more than nine billion each).

Our sensitive singer songwriter guys like Vance Joy and Dean Lewis have over five billion streams each for their songs.

And a raft of electronic music greats continue to generate millions of plays for their new stuff and old stuff each year including Flume (five billion), Empire of the Sun (four billion) and PNAU (three billion).

Tones and I, the first female artist in the world to crack the three billion streams for a song with Dance Monkey, has more than five billion total Spotify plays for her catalogue.

Chase Atlantic said they were reunited with fans during their Australian success who have followed them since they were a teen start-up and feel a sense of pride in the band’s achievements as one of our biggest music exports.

“They’ve been following us since they were 11 and we were 15 and now they’re 20 and they have a sense of pride in seeing us doing what we’re doing,” Anthony said.

“We always say how much we love Australia and love Australian artists, and we wish there were more that were bigger around the world.”