The Impact of ARIA Charts, NZ Charts and Regional Spotify Charts on Consumer Purchasing Behaviour in the Live Music Industry

This report used a mix of qualitative and quantitative research approaches to examine the impact of ARIA charts, NZ charts and regional Spotify charts on consumer purchasing behaviour in the Australian live music industry. We find that the charts do not reflect potential touring success in Australia and New Zealand. In the first instance we find that with the increasingly globalized music industries, aided by rise of streaming services, the ARIA and NZ charts have come to be dominated by international artists. There are several compounding factors causing this: • Larger overseas audiences skewing the listening data that drives Spotify’s algorithm, privileging overseas acts as a result. • the global dominance of hip-hop and pop music, genres Australian artists traditionally underperform in; • the dominance of curated playlists over music discovery, from which Australian artists are largely excluded as a result of our geographic location and the size of our industry; • the use of streaming service popularity to determine commercial radio play and the lax enforcement of local content quotas; • international PR teams for global megastars can influence the Spotify algorithm, and; • the conflict that the dominant members of ARIA, the major record labels, have in prioritising international over local artists. Despite the dominance of the ARIA and NZ charts by international artists, general optimism regarding the state of Australian music prevailed. All our interviewees pointed to a clear disconnect between the charts and live music in Australia and NZ and argued for a broader ecosystem of data to be used in determining demand for live performance. They pointed particularly to the fact that the charts no longer simply document purchase behaviour but now also measure listening behaviour (both active and passive listenership) as a reason behind this thinking. Across the interviews conducted for this report, the following indicators were identified: • airplay on triple j was seen as a strong indicator of touring success; • placement on triple j’s Hottest 100 list was described as being a unique indicator because it relies on listener polling; • the effect of airplay on triple j was argued to be enhanced when artists are able to cross over to commercial radio playlists, reaching a broader audience base as a result. While data stemming from Spotify use was commonly mentioned as being an indicator of touring success for local artists, identifying the right data was more important for the following reasons: • the data sets needed vary depending on the genre of music being considered and the audience demographic. • more granular data on active engagement where users add tracks to their playlists or directly follow artists was noted as being a more compelling metric to work with than a basic streaming number; • data relating to peer-to-peer or ‘friend’ recommendations was also cited as being useful; • Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, Apple Music and SoundCloud data were commonly mentioned by our participants as being the best indicators of touring success for local Artists. The ‘events’ tab in Facebook, was singled out as being a broad indicator of audience interest; We also found that because the pattern of ‘useful’ data sets is in a constant state of flux, it can be used to an artist’s advantage; they can cherry-pick the best data to tell the most convincing story. Overall, industry insiders pointed to Soundcharts as the most useful aggregator of the multiple data sets. While the general consensus was that there is no singular answer to these questions; gaining better insight into which data will give a more accurate predictor of touring success, is therefore, a matter of using the principles of agile management to experiment in order to find a way forward. Live Nation, William Morris Endeavor and Creative Artists Agency were seen as being in the best position to make sense of this given they have largest data sets in the field.