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At the 33rd ARIA Music Awards held at The Star Sydney in Sydney, Australia, on November 27, 2019, Australian singers Lisa Origliasso (from left), Jessica Mauboy, and Jessica Origliasso pose for a commemorative photo. The image is unrelated to the article. / EPA-Yonhap

Australian popular music is struggling to establish a meaningful presence in an increasingly globalized music market and is even losing its standing in domestic charts.

The Guardian reported on the 7th (local time) that Australian popular music, which has long reflected the lives and sentiments of Australians, is being pushed out of top chart positions by global pop, warning that the survival of Australian music is under threat.

The Guardian recently analyzed 40 years of data from the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) charts and found that the domestic presence of Australian popular music has significantly declined compared to the past.

While Australian music accounted for around 30% of annual charts in the early 1990s, its share has recently fallen to the low single digits. Last year, only five Australian artists appeared in the ARIA annual singles Top 100 chart.

Analysts attribute the decline of Australian musicians in their home market to changes in the media environment, platform dominance, and structural limitations of the streaming era.

Traditional channels through which Australians once discovered new music—such as music magazines, specialized websites, community media, television music programs, live venues, and music festivals—have sharply declined or disappeared over the past decades.

Although radio broadcasters still maintain quotas for Australian music, their influence has weakened as public attention has shifted to platforms such as YouTube and TikTok. As a result, the channels that once discovered and promoted music to the public have largely disappeared.

In addition, the rise of streaming as the dominant mode of music consumption has enabled global tech platforms driven by algorithms to dominate the market, forcing Australian musicians to compete with well-funded global pop stars from the United States and the United Kingdom.

While streaming usage in Australia has increased by more than 50% over the past five years, the share of Australian content during the same period has declined by about 31%.

Streaming services also count repeated plays of the same track toward chart rankings. As a result, globally viral pop songs and older tracks revived as internet memes have continued to dominate the charts for years.

In response, the association has decided to fully revise its chart methodology to protect domestic music and ensure greater diversity. Only songs released within the past two years, or songs that have never entered the Top 100 in the past decade, will be eligible for chart inclusion. Rankings will be based on digital downloads and streaming, which account for over 70% of industry revenue.

An official described the change as unavoidable, saying it is intended to “discover and celebrate great Australian music.”

                                                                                                           Lee Dae-won