Australians logging into Spotify this morning may have been surprised – or perhaps not at all – to see that a decade-old folk pop song was the nation’s most streamed song by an Australian artist this year.
The streaming platform releases an annual roundup of its most played tracks every December called Spotify Wrapped, which reveals national trends as well as leaving some users amused, confused and ashamed about their individual listening habits.
It was Vance Joy’s unkillable 2013 hit Riptide that took out the No 1 spot as the most streamed Australian song by Australians on Spotify in 2024.
Riptide, which won the 2013 Triple J Hottest 100, has enjoyed 331 consecutive weeks in the Aria charts. Despite being more than 10 years old, it is currently No 2 on the Aria Australian singles chart and often sits at No 1 – it was only bumped into the second spot this week by The Kid Laroi’s Nights Like This.
Riptide has now gone 16 times platinum in Australia and been streamed more than 2bn times globally on Spotify.
So why does this song have so much staying power? With a dash of ukulele and smattering of “a-wooos”, perhaps it’s simply innocuous and upbeat enough to always be on in the background – particularly at every cafe and cold pressed juice shop near you. Taylor Swift was certainly a fan; she covered it in 2016, before inviting Vance Joy to support her 1989 tour.
“It’s like a chair or a table,” the musician himself once said of his own hit, “totally self-sufficient and made out of good materials.”
But Riptide’s chokehold on the charts reflects the difficulty for newer Australian artists to break through in a changing music industry, in which social media and streaming are increasingly important and former tastemakers like Triple J have lost listeners and influence. The Australian song streamed second-most by Australians in 2024 was Stumblin’ In, a remix of a Chris Norman and Suzi Quatro song from 1978 created by Cyril, an electronic artist who has found great success on TikTok playing on nostalgia and reimagining decades-old tracks.
But Vance Joy isn’t the only veteran act with a vice-like grip on local listeners – the Australian artist that was most streamed by Australians on Spotify was children’s group the Wiggles, a stat that speaks to the number of parents who desperately tried to pacify their kids this year. The Wiggles were followed by rapper The Kid Laroi, while producer Dom Dolla and electronic group RÜFÜS DU SOL also placed high, reflecting the ongoing boom in Australian dance music.
In the year her Eras tour captivated live audiences, Taylor Swift was Australia’s most streamed artist overall. Her album The Tortured Poets Department was the country’s most streamed album, followed by albums from Sabrina Carpenter and Billie Eilish. On the podcast front, The Joe Rogan Experience, which controversially recently featured US president-elect Donald Trump, is Spotify’s most popular podcast in Australia for the second year in a row.
This year’s Wrapped comes in the wake of increasing cynicism over the Spotify algorithm, which some have speculated is engineering artist popularity. As Shaad D’Souza wrote for the Guardian, many listeners took to social media this year to question why tracks like Sabrina Carpenter’s Please Please Please or Billie Eilish’s Birds of a Feather were so frequently turning up in automated playlists.
Whether or not that’s evidence of deliberate interference by Spotify – the platform won’t speak publicly about how its algorithm works – it’s clear the streaming service plays a huge role in deciding hits.
Many Australians have taken to social media to share their own Spotify lists. Among them was the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, who had the G Flip song Australia almost too perfectly placed in the top spot. Albanese’s other most streamed tracks were all from Australian artists – Angie McMahon, Hockey Dad, Lime Cordiale and King Stingray.
His 2023 Spotify Wrapped, however, was dominated by international acts. Perhaps the looming election year – or a staffer on a burner phone – can account for his sudden change in taste.
