Sticky Fingers Are A Top-Five Aussie Act & Other Lessons From Spotify's 2016 User Data Report

We're officially in December now, and you know what that means: end-of-year lists.

We don't know about you, but we love this sort of thing. This month is basically just one long orgy of organisation and, frankly, we can't wait to get honeyed up and dive right into sorting out some sexy, sexy statistics.

Streaming giant Spotify is here to help us do just that nice and early in the month with its in-depth Year In Music 2016 report, which uncovers all manner of eye-opening truths about we Australians as a people, and more broadly, humans a music-consuming species. 

It's all a bit revelatory. Strap yourselves in and get ready... for education.

Our local favourites run diverse

Australia's top five Australian artists for 2016 come from a broad cross-section of musical subcultures, with icon du jour Flume topping the list for his metallic musicianship, stepping in ahead of critical and commercial darling Sia — the only Australian artist to also appear on a global top-five list, as one of the world's favourite female artists (#3) — as well as rap vets Hilltop Hoods, the rascals in Sticky Fingers and alt-dance faves RÜFÜS, respectively.

Oddly, StiFi are the only from that list to not appear in either the country's top five Australian tracks or top five Australian albums; naturally, Flume appears across both (twice in top tracks, at #1 for Never Be Like You ft. Kai and #2 for Say It ft. Tove Lo, and once in top albums, with Skin at #2), as do the Hilltop Hoods (#4 track: 1955 ft. Montaigne & Tom Thum; #1 album: Drinking From The Sun, Walking Under Stars Restrung) and Sia (#3 track: Cheap Thrills; #3 album: This Is Acting).

For their part, RÜFÜS appear at #4 on the top albums list with Bloom, just ahead of Troye Sivan's Blue Neighbourhood, which rounds out the group at #5. Illy completes the top five tracks with Papercuts ft. Vera Blue. 

We also love our mononyms

Well, that, or artists who choose to perform under a single name are inordinately more talented than those who don't. It's hard to say.

Either way, of the 10 individual artists who appear across the categories of Australia's top five artists, top five male artists and top five female artists, seven of those go singular in the moniker department: Drake (#1 artist and male artist), Flume (#3 artist and male artist), Rihanna (#5 artist and #1 female artist), Eminem (#5 male artist), Sia (#3 female artist), Adele (#4 female artist) and Beyonce (#5 female artist).

Justin Bieber (#2 artist and male artist), Kanye West (#4 artist and male artist) and Ariana Grande (#2 female artist) do break the trend, however, so a surname isn't necessarily tantamount to career death Down Under. 

actually, we may just really love drake

Dude not only tops the artist and male artist lists, but his tune One Dance (ft. WizKid & Kyla) was the nation's #1 track, and his Views LP our #1 album. That's pretty unsurprising though — his placings in Australia were mirrored across the board on the global level too. Seems the world just can't get enough of old mate Drizzy.

...but we definitely love the hits

Our favourite playlists read like a teenager's CD rack in the late 1990s: Hot Hits Australia (#1), Today's Top Hits (#2) and Monster Dance Hits (#4) populate the ranks of the Aussie top five sets on Spotify, though the remaining high achievers paint something of a mixed message about how we're spending our downtime: Do you want to Just Chill (#3) or do you want to Get Popped! (#5)? What do you want, Australia? 

To see if you can make any more sense of it than we can, check out the full report from Spotify, including a deeper look at global trends and results, here.