YOU might not see names like Short Stack, Tame Impala or Drapht top the ARIA music charts, but according to MySpace they are among the most popular artists in the country. MySpace Australia has released a list showing the most viewed artist profiles by Australian music listeners in the past year, with results vastly differing from the more common ARIA chart measurement.
New South Wales and Western Australia showed their hometown pride, with local products Short Stack and Drapht topping their most visited lists. South Australia is the most patriotic state, with eight of their top 20 Aussie acts, while overall Australian artists occupy one quarter of the country’s total lists.
But that doesn’t mean the heavyweight artists are missing out. Lily Allen, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga still feature highly on the list. A number of unsigned artists also featured in the lists, including The Polaroid People.
Tracking the popularity of music artists has been increasingly difficult over the past couple of years, with the move for music from traditional CD sales results to a more digital world.
Artist’s CD sales have been in rapid decline, with ARIA sales figures showing a 12 percent decline in 2008, while digital sales boomed by 35 per cent.
The top two artists in 2008 based on album sales, Kings Of Leon and Pink, do not feature in any state's top 20.
A similar trend has been seen on Australian website We Are Hunted - which tracks digital sales globally - showing the 99 most downloaded artists in the past year.
The ability for music lovers to simply search for an artist’s profile and listen to tracks for free has also made music far more accessible to the wider public.
Measuring an artist’s popularity by album sales alone is largely defunct, Darain Faraz, MySpace Australia’s spokesperson said.
“We live in the digital age and there is now a whole world of music discovery and experience which operates outside the realm of traditional metrics of artist popularity,” Faraz said.
“Album sales can’t measure this kind of engagement nor this organic growth in popularity which is natural to social environments.”
Faraz believes that social media is only going to play a greater role in rating and improving the popularity of musicians.
“Social media is credible and unmediated, so provides artists with a communication channel and the tools to grow a fan base and generate viral buzz around anything from their latest single or video clip to an upcoming tour,” he said.
However, Mark Poston, senior vice president of marketing for EMi Music Australasia, says it's hard to compare popularity on social media with fan bases.
"For someone like Lily Allen, social media is a great reflection of her popularity - her latest album sold 150,000 albums before any major above the line advertising spend.
"For someone like Keith Urban, his fan base is less engaged online and yet he is still extraordinarily successful so social media isn't such an accurate gauge.
"It varies between our artists.," he said.
He explains, while social media has become more important than ever, there's still a place for measures like the ARIA charts.
"The ARIA chart is the industry standard. It is the immediate and legitimate reaction of consumers as measured by record sales.
"Social media is much more nebulous. It's about people's conversations, their feelings, their emotions. It's much harder to gauge," he said.