I normally look at more emerging artists but this week it’s worth taking a look at one of Australia’s most beloved acts, Amyl & The Sniffers. I’m (obviously!) not trying to say that they’re up-and-coming – I’m saying that as established as they already are, they’re not done growing yet.
Tracks released: 3
Playlists appeared on*: 18 – As you’d expect from an artist this size, this is a big number, and they are unsurprisingly one of the most consistently-added artists across the Australian new music playlists I track. No surprises here, just affirmation that their critic support remains rock solid.
Spotify followers**: This is the interesting bit for me. Amyl and The Sniffers have been at this for most of a decade now, leaving them in a pivotal period where an artist can hit a plateau, a hard stop which they never really get past again. That absolutely doesn’t look like it’s happening here though. Since they roared back into public-facing life in late May this year, they’ve added over 40k followers to their total. That’s a lot in only three months – especially when you’re starting from a base that’s in the hundreds of thousands, and even more especially when you are (let’s face it) an abrasive and non-pop band, all of which is not high on the fashionability scale right now.
So, only a short way into the cycle for the just-announced new album (‘Cartoon Darkness’, out 25th Oct), they’re showing impressive speed right out of the gate, and the early signals strongly suggest that this next album will keep these mischievous, brilliant legends in an increasingly bright spotlight for some while to come.
Listen to them on Spotify, or follow them on Instagram
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* I don’t track every single playlist in the whole world because that would be bonkers. The 40 or so that I do track are specifically chosen because they focus on new music by Australian artists – this narrows down the set to a manageable size, showing who’s supporting an artist before any given track has already blown up. Basically, I think it’s a solid dataset to show which artists are getting critic support.
** I tend to use Spotify Followers as the key metric to watch, instead of Monthly Listeners or Popularity. Monthlies are great, but they can be messed up by an artist being a contributor or songwriter on another artist’s track, and (along with Popularity) can fluctuate pretty wildly. Followers implies a conscious choice of preference from a user, so for me is the strongest and steadiest signal of solid, ongoing audience support.
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