Every week across 2022, my robots tracked what was getting added to the most credible Australian new music playlists on Spotify. Each week, I took a look at who was getting the most adds to these playlists. I found these interesting because it gave me a good idea of who was getting heavily supported by playlisters and tastemakers, not just who was getting all the streams. It’s a little hint at who might be about to blow up next, basically. This though is a look back at the whole year, who got the most adds as an artist, or for individual tracks.
For anyone paying attention this year, there will be no surprise who took out both the most added Artist and Track spots in 2022, and it’s a bloody delight to see King Stingray blaze across the scene this year. Plenty of others though made it way higher up the list than you might think – while Julia Jacklin or Sampa The Great appeared as often as you’d expect, the likes of Pheobe Go, Body Type, Elsy Wameyo, and Beckah Amani were all over the lists whenever they released new material. For me, those are the sorts of artists to watch in 2023.
The full charts are below for you to play with. What I tend to look for in particular are where an artist’s follower count is lower than those of the artists at a similar level of adds – these are the acts getting disproportionate amounts of support, which can be a useful signal that they are being heavily backed to go on to bigger things.
The playlists I track pause mostly pause over the new year period, but will start up again in the new year and I’ll re-start tracking them then. In the meantime, the year past was a magical one for Australian music, with the promise of an even better one to come – Happy New Year everyone.