Though it may seem as though any time you switch on the radio these days all you can hear are overseas artists, Australians have dominated a mid-year report by industry outlet The Music Network, with Flume scoring the biggest track of the year.
The Music Network have compiled a mid-year report which examines sales, airplay, and streaming numbers for the country’s biggest tracks and then compiles charts based on performance, with Flume’s ‘Never Be Like You’ besting international competition.
‘Never Be Like You’, a collaboration with vocalist Kai and one of several singles taken from Flume’s sophomore album Skin, was the most played song on Aussie radio, the second-highest selling single on the mainstream chart, and the most streamed song in the country.
Flume’s fellow Australian Sia didn’t fare too poorly either. Her latest smash, ‘Cheap Thrills’, a song originally penned for Rihanna, sat at number two on the airplay chart and also managed to hit the Top 10 on the sales chart, nabbing the Number 8 spot.
Speaking to The Music Network, Future Classic Label Manager Ed Sholl explained how the beloved Sydney EDM label understood they had a hit on their hands when Flume first approached them with ‘Never Be Like You’ and elaborated on the promotional campaign behind it.
“We had identified as a real objective to enlist [BBC] Radio 1 as a champion of Flume… It was an amazing way to start the ‘album two’ campaign and a kind of early signifier of where that single would end up internationally,” he explained.
“The US is still working the ‘Never Be Like You’ cycle right now, six months after it was released. We probably started the US commercial radio conversation in late February. It started to connect in March and it’s just been a steady increase in audience each week with new additions.”
“It went from one million to two million, five, 20 million in the last little while, and now it’s sitting at #22 or #23 on the Top 40 radio charts in the US.” In fact, sales for the single in the US (about 250,000 units) have outstripped sales in Australia.
