How the Philippines helps make or break Aussie pop stars overseas

Sydney Morning Herald

2 days ago

When an Australian pop song gains traction in the Philippines, Sulinna Ong knows she's onto a winner.
'I pay attention because it's generally an indication it will go wider,' says Ong, an Australian who rose through the ranks of streaming giant Spotify to become its global head of editorial. 'If it's pop and it's doing well in the Philippines, it usually spreads and grows from there.'
Larissa Lambert's Cardio is a good example: that track was embraced in the Philippines before it took off in the US and UK, while artists such as Grentperez and Keenan Te have also enjoyed massive success in that country. Indeed, Aussie acts racked up more than 140 million streams in the Philippines in March alone, making it the fastest-growing market for our homegrown pop.
This is one of the insights from Spotify's inaugural Global Impact Report, which documents the booming popularity of Australian music overseas.
In the four years to March 2025, the total number of streams by local artists in international markets grew by 37 per cent, placing Australia among Spotify's top 10 global music exporters.
Leading the list of most-played songs by Australian musicians – including those featuring a local guest artist – are I Know Love by Tate McRae and The Kid Laroi; Beautiful People by David Guetta and Sia; and Dreamin by Daya and Dom Dolla. Other prominent Australians to make the cut include Troye Sivan, Dean Lewis and Kylie Minogue.
'Australia's geographic isolation used to be seen as a disadvantage,' Ong says. 'But I actually think it's an advantage now because it's allowed a younger generation of artists – who feel connected through social media and technology – to want to replicate not just what they're seeing in the US and UK, but the many different cultures and artists from around the world. The quality of Australian music is of an international standard, and that's why it's resonating with audiences everywhere.'
The dominance of pop music in the Philippines – where artists such as Minogue, Guy Sebastian and Missy Higgins each have loyal followings – helps explain that country's influence on the global music scene. It's a similar story in Brazil, where dance music is enormously popular: in March, Brazilians streamed Australian songs more than 200 million times.
While Germany and Canada also account for a high proportion of Australian music streams, the UK and US remain the biggest markets thanks to their large, English-speaking populations. But the picture is more complex than it was a decade ago.
'In 2014, the import-export channels were largely the US and UK,' Ong says. 'Now, it looks more like those airline route maps, where you see all the lines going back and forth between the different countries. The fact that Australian artists are being listened to in markets they wouldn't have traditionally reached, especially non-Anglo markets, is really due to the 'no borders' streaming policy at Spotify.'
Of course, this policy also means Australians can consume as much international music as they wish. According to a report by research company Luminate, local acts comprise just 9.2 per cent of streamed music in Australia – while in India and Japan, 70 per cent of streams come from their own artists. And the proportion of Australian and New Zealand acts in the ARIA top 100 chart has fallen from 16 per cent between 2000 and 2016 to just 2.5 per cent in 2023.
It's an issue that various ministers and music bodies have debated, with some questioning whether streamers should be required to feature Australian acts more prominently on their platforms.
'There are consequences that need to be thought through,' Ong says. 'If every country adopts a cap [on the promotion of foreign artists in order to boost local performers], it will have an impact on international growth. Australia has a small population, so there's a ceiling there. What we're hearing from artists is that being able to have an international audience and a touring career outside of Australia is very important to them.'
Given the decline in sales of physical music formats, which has reduced the income of many artists, should Spotify increase its royalty payments?
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'I was there when peer-to-peer file sharing [became popular two decades ago] and I saw the decline of recorded music,' Ong says. 'That has been completely reversed by streaming, and the royalty payouts have never been higher … we paid US$10 billion to rights-holders in 2024 and US$5 billion of that went to independent artists and labels. But there is a misconception about the payouts – because we pay directly to rights-holders, we don't have control over how a major label or publisher decides to split that money with their artists.'
Born in the UK to a Persian mother and Chinese father, Ong and her family spent time in Iran before fleeing the 1978-79 revolution. Eventually, they settled in Australia, where Ong studied music at Western Sydney University.
'I had two passions as a child: music and technology,' she says. 'I was told I'd have to focus on one or the other, but I didn't really buy that. I always felt they'd converge at some point.'
Each day, Ong – who has a team of 130 music editors reporting to her – makes a point of switching off her phone's notifications, lying on the floor and listening to music for at least three hours. It's a process she believes is essential to help discover and promote new artists, despite Spotify's use of artificial intelligence to recommend songs to its users.
'When you've got AI and machine learning, human taste is even more important,' she says. 'AI is very good at scraping data and finding patterns, but what if there's no data, like when you have a brand-new artist? That's why we've never had a reduction in the size of our editorial team.'
Could Spotify do more to promote Australian music?
'As an industry, we have to do more across the board,' Ong says. 'It's concerning that smaller venues are disappearing because they're important for artists to get a foothold and hone their craft. If you look at markets like Korea, where they're strong not just in music but in TV and film, their government invested in a 20-year strategy because they believed that with the right support, their entertainment could be commercially viable and internationally successful – and they were right.'