It’s not been the busiest twelve months release-wise for Sydney’s fabulous four-piece The Buoys, but that still hasn’t stopped them adding audience and solidifying critic support. In fact, there’s a bunch of reasons why they’re in a strong position to take it to another level this year.
Let’s look at the release schedule first. In 2023, we got the stellar ‘I Want You‘ at the beginning of the year, but then nada until November’s release of ‘Settle Petal‘. Just a couple of weeks ago in Feb, we then get ‘Guard My Heart‘ to make it just three releases in twelve months. I’m not dissing their workrate – what I’m saying is that even with only three releases, they still grew consistently.
Getting over the hump of 10k Spotify followers is more psychological than meaningful, but it’s as good a yardstick as any – to be able to add new audience at a consistent rate to break through that barrier (with 41% growth in a year), suggests that whatever they’re doing, it’s working.
The critics and playlisters are also on board. Looking at the 30 or so credible new Australian music playlists that I track, there’s been rock-ribbed support there too. For each of those tracks they bagged spots on both New Music Friday AU & NZ and on Triple J’s New Music Hitlist – that’s really hard to do! Add to that the wide spread of both major and independent support and there’s definitely a belief in this band at a grassroots and at a more corporate level.
If The Buoys can grow that consistently in a quiet year… well, hell. Just think what they can do when they really crank up the volume. Sit back and watch – the signals are all there to suggest that we’re going to find out.
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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.
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