The streaming era has swamped Australian music with a monoculture of imported tunes, new research shows.
Former music executive and researcher Tim Kelly has studied the nationality of artists in the top 100 ARIA charts since 2000, and says his findings point to an unsurprising Americanisation of the Australian charts.
"In every category it's homogenising, there's less Australians, there's less non-Anglo artists, less women in the charts," he told AAP.
Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube are estimated to make up 97 per cent of the streaming market, and that's combined with a similar dominance by major music labels Universal, Sony and Warner.
"We are becoming a one-shop town with a dominant supplier, and when you get that, you get homogenised choice, and that's what I'm finding," said Kelly.
While the reduction in Australian tunes in the ARIA charts is well known, his research proves they have been replaced by music from North America and the UK.
In the 2000-2016 pre-streaming era, North American artists made up less than half the ARIA annual charts on average.
But since Spotify entered the market, that chart share increased to 75 per cent of the top 100 albums in 2023.
A little surprising in all this is Kelly's upcoming paper only mentions Taylor Swift ... twice.
The US megastar's dominance of the ARIA charts around her blockbuster Australian tour and the release of her latest album reached almost comical heights earlier in 2024: Swift took every slot in the top-10 singles chart, and most of the top 50.
Chart supremacy in the streaming era is in part the result of how the charts are designed according to Kelly, a former ARIA chart committee member.
Before streaming, they represented a single purchase - a cassette tape, record or CD - but these days they also track micro-payments for songs from an artist's back catalogue.
This explains why Swift's Cruel Summer sits at number 38 after 47 weeks in the charts (with Australian singer-songwriter Vance Joy's Riptide at number 40, having spent two years in the top 50).
With the likes of Fleetwood Mac currently charting with its 1977 release Dreams, Kelly says music labels risk relying on their back catalogues and becoming stagnant.
It's a dire scenario for the industry, said Kelly.
"Sometimes you got to crash before you can be reborn," he said.
"I can see a vacuum coming where the desire for new stuff isn't being filled by industry - something's got to come along to fill that vacuum."
Earlier research showed that in Europe, local artists benefited from the greater accessibility offered by music streaming in countries where the native language was not English.
Kelly's paper demonstrates the flip side - that in smaller English-speaking countries, local artists are likely to be drowned out by the cultural dominance of US and British music.
"Australia really suffers from that ... if we are concerned about our musical culture, it does need some kind of intervention," he said.
Kelly is completing his research paper at the University of Technology Sydney, as a federal parliamentary committee conducts an inquiry into the live music industry.
The inquiry is examining a live music crisis, with festivals cancelled and venues closing as costs soar and performers receive minimal income from music streaming giants.
The notion of a "Tay Tay Tax", in which a levy on tickets for big international tours is funnelled into developing local acts, has been raised repeatedly over several days of hearings.
The live music inquiry hearings resume in Melbourne on Monday.
Tim Kelly's findings will be published in October in the International Journal of Music Business Research.
