The selling power of Australian artists to their local audience is in a relatively healthy condition, at least according to ARIA’s results of the best selling albums and singles and top streaming tracks of the last 12 months.
Unveiled today, ARIA’s Top 100 list of the highest selling releases of 2013 was characteristically dominated by commercial and international mainstream acts, but contained 27 albums and 13 singles from Australian artists.
Sydney producer Flume had the best selling Aussie album of the year, the 22-year-old Harley Streten’s ARIA-dominating Flume coming in at #11 overall on the Top 100 albums list, just missing out on the Top 10 which saw Pink’s The Truth About Love named the #1 best-selling album of 2013, and for the second year running (largely thanks to her three-month, 46-date Australian album tour).
Flume’s self-titled LP was also one of 14 Australian albums released in 2013 that went to #1, may of which also made the Top 100 cut – including Bliss N Eso’s Circus In The Sky (at #34), Birds Of Tokyo’s March Fires (#37) along with its ARIA history making associate release, Karnivool’s Asymmetry (#91), Boy & Bear’s Harlequin Dream (#57), and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ Push The Sky Away; voted by Tone Deaf readers as the best Aussie album of 2013 and the band’s first-ever chart-topping album in their 30 year existence.
Other notable entrants in the Top 100 best selling albums was the continued selling strength of Tame Impala’s 2012 album Lonerism (at #90), no doubt boosted by the Perth band’s cadre of ARIA wins at December’s awards ceremony, and the appearance of Troy Cassar-Daley & Adam Harvey’s The Great Country Songbook (at #35). The country covers collection that controversially snatched the #1 debut position from Kanye West’s Yeezus back in June, before ARIA retracted the charts and altered the results. “2013 was a monumental year for the ARIA Charts… Congratulations to all of the artists that featured.”
Flume’s double Platinum-selling independent release, through award-winning Sydney label Future Classic, also saw his breakout single ‘Holdin’ On’ making an appearance on the Top 100 selling singles of 2013 (at #52). But it is another independently released artist, Melbourne singer-songwriter Vance Joy, that takes the honours for the best selling Aussie single with the acoustic revelry of ‘Riptide’ landing at #12.
‘Riptide’ falls just outside of a Top 10 dominated by blockbuster international singles from the likes of Katy Perry (‘Roar’ at #1), Robin Thicke (‘Blurred Lines’ at #2), Passenger (‘Let Her Go’ at #3), and New Zealand sensation Lorde’s Royals via The Love Club EP at #5 (the six-track release being valid for the singles chart due to some peculiar conditions).
Vance Joy’s ‘Riptide’ led a pack of 13 Aussie singles in the top-selling list (two up from last year’s figure, and double that of 2011), followed by – in order – Birds Of Tokyo’s ‘Lanterns’ (the most played song on Aussie radio landing at #25), Matt Corby’s ‘Resolution’ (#39), Stafford Brothers’ Hello (#42), Timomatic’s ‘Parachute’ (#45), Guy Sebastian’s ‘Like A Drum’ (#50), Flume (#52), Justice Crew’s ‘Everybody’ (#58), Havana Brown’s ‘Warrior’ (#83), Sheppard’s self-titled EP (#87), and Jessica Mauboy’s ‘Pop A Bottle (Fill Me Up)’ (#91).
Also introduced for the first time ever is ARIA’s Top 100 Streaming Tracks of 2013, which saw 17-year-old Kiwi Lorde’s ‘Royals’ trumping all contenders as the most streamed track of the year with the rest of the streaming results being fairly similar to Spotify’s own end-of-year streaming charts (no surprise, given the Swedish-bred service’s popularity Down Under).
While Aussie artists missed out on Top 10 positions in the Albums and Singles rankings, the streaming Top 100 broke that trend, Flume’s ‘Holdin On’ and Vance Joy’s ‘Riptide’ once again making an appearance, (at #9 and #10) respectively. In fact, the former had four more placements in the Top 100, including his Chet Faker team-up ‘Left Alone’ ranking at #77.
ARIA CEO Dan Rosen was enthusiastic about the charts body’s 2013 results; “2013 was a monumental year for the ARIA Charts, as we celebrated the Charts 30th anniversary, saw a record 14 Australian Number One Singles and Albums and introduced the very first ARIA Streaming Tracks Chart,” he said in a statement. “Congratulations to all of the artists that featured on the 2013 ARIA Charts…”
You can view ARIA’s best selling 2013 lists in full below:
Top 100 Selling Albums Chart | Top 100 Selling Singles Chart | Top 100 Streaming Tracks Chart
