Today’s Music Ally Bulletin highlights a troubling trend from APRA AMCOS: while revenues in Australia’s music industry reached record highs, the share of local music being streamed has dropped dramatically — from 13.6% in 2021 to just 9.5% in 2025.
This isn’t just an Australian story. It’s a global symptom of a system where streaming platforms and pro rata distribution models amplify what’s already globally successful, instead of nurturing what makes each region culturally unique.
We’ve spent the last decade celebrating “global reach,” but perhaps we’ve been measuring the wrong kind of success. When algorithms designed to maximize engagement and profit shape what we hear, the local voice gets quieter — not because audiences don’t want it, but because the infrastructure isn’t built to serve it.
Alternatives are emerging though. At the Fair Music Project for example, in collaboration with the International Music Council and New Internet Media, they work tirelessly to create alternatives: new models, new platforms, and fairer systems of remuneration that support also local repertoire, diversity, and cultural as well as long-term financial sustainability.
Alternatives are emerging, though. At the Fair Music Project, for example, in collaboration with the International Music Council and New Internet Media, they work tirelessly to create new models, new platforms, and fairer systems of remuneration — supporting not only local repertoire and diversity, but also cultural and long-term financial sustainability.
The pro rata model – where revenue is distributed based on total global streams – rewards dominance, not diversity. It’s a structure that inevitably tilts toward “the global local” — where global hits occupy local playlists, while local artists struggle for visibility.
But the real challenge, and opportunity, is to make the local global.
To build systems where local creativity, language, and identity don’t just survive but travel — where Swedish jazz, Māori pop, or Australian indie rock can find audiences beyond their borders without having to mimic global templates.
The future of music isn’t about more playlists or token quotas. It’s about structural change — about technology and policy working together to ensure that what is local can thrive, reach, and inspire across borders.
Because if we lose our local sounds, we lose our global diversity — and with it, the diamonds in the rough. History shows us that the unexpected often becomes the timeless, the so-called outsiders who shape culture in ways algorithms could never predict.