One of the most exciting bands in Australia right now, Radio Free Alice are ticking the boxes with both audiences and critics, picking up increasingly hefty playlist support and fast-growing amounts of followers all at the same time.
It’s still early days, sure, but the speed at which things are happening for this band are significant. Even though it’s from a low base, a nearly four-fold increase in Spotify followers in twelve months is, to say the least, rapid. It’s particularly interesting because that growth hasn’t been based on constant, frequent releases – the impact of their releases has been thoroughly disproportionate to their volume.
The support from tastemakers and critics has been growing too. While it’s relatively easy to at least get noticed at the start, it’s considerably harder to maintain attention, let alone grow it. Only Triple J plus a handful of keen-eyed indie playlists caught onto them last year, but that saw them bag a rare spot on the triple J New Music Hitlist, one of the biggest new music lists in the country. Twelve months later, their latest track has seen a far wider range of supporters, including a spot on the other gold-standard list, Spotify’s New Music Friday AU & NZ.
They’ve also just played the UK’s Great Escape festival and are about to embark on more UK and EU dates, which adds a layer of particularly smart touring that will no doubt help spread the word even wider.
With intelligent, literate songwriting that feels like it would appeal to both sides of the Atlantic and the Pacific, it’s hard not to think that Radio Free Alice will be growing at a rapid clip for some time to come.
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* 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.
Listen to Radio Free Alice on Spotify, or follow them on Instagram
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