The whole country couldn’t be prouder of our Dami Im at the moment. The Korean-born, Brisbane-bred singer and former X Factor contestant came in second at the most recent Eurovision Song Contest, representing Australia.
A silver finish in an incredible effort for Australia’s second time in competition at Eurovision and improved significantly on Guy Sebastian’s placing when he ushered Australia into the world-famous music competition last year.
Im’s performance has resulted in a newfound international recognition for her entry. As The Vine reports, ‘Sound of Silence’ is currently sitting in the top 20 of 14 European countries, including number one in Malta.
It’s currently number three in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Lithuania, and Estonia; number four in Poland; number five in Slovenia; six in Belgium; seven in the Netherlands; and number nine in Denmark.
In fact, Im’s tune is actually fairing better on the European charts than the winning entry from Ukraine. Back home it’s currently number one on the Australian iTunes charts. Though you wouldn’t know it from listening to the radio.
Despite the track coming in second at Eurovision and gaining widespread chart recognition across all both Eastern and Western Europe, Australian commercial radio still can’t seem to get past their bias against Australian music to play it.
According to data obtained by Tone Deaf, ‘Sound of Silence’ has been played a mere 156 times across all of Australia’s commercial radio stations since it was released back on 11th March. 109 of those plays were within the last week.
“Despite the track gaining widespread recognition across Europe, Australian commercial radio still can’t seem to get past their bias against Australian music to play it.”Whilst this may seem as though Australian radio stations are taking an interest in Im and her song, which it should be noted is an obvious pop song from a major label with commercial appeal, 109 plays across some 60 commercial stations is more than a little underwhelming.
To put this in context, a song is considered to be in high rotation on a commercial radio station when it received between 30-40 spins. If we do the math and go with the conservative figure, recent airplay should be closer to 1,800 plays.
Taking this into consideration, 109 plays suddenly doesn’t seem like local commercial radio is taking an interest in local artistry at all, especially if we assume the only times it was played was following or preceding discussions of Eurovision.
All this does is once again beg the question of why Australian commercial radio stations have such a bias against playing homegrown music, especially when the stations that do are consistently winning in the ratings.
