Making it onto a popular Spotify playlist is huge for country musician Sara Storer, who is releasing her eighth solo album.
But she puts it down to sheer luck.
"You just cross your fingers - you rely on someone to like your music, to get on a playlist that could be heard by millions," she says.
This is the kind of scale musicians need to even start making money from recordings in the streaming era.
Even solid numbers from Storer's mostly Australian audience don't translate to a viable income.
A recent snapshot of the listening habits of Australian music fans show the shift to streaming has resulted in playlists that are dominated by pop from the US and Britain.
While Australians say they love local music, only one in three fans will actively look for new songs by Australian artists, research by federal music development and funding agency Music Australia shows.
And of the top 10,000 artists streamed in Australia during 2024, eight per cent were Australian while more than half were from the US, according to entertainment analytics firm Luminate.
These are sobering figures but Darwin-based Storer has high hopes for her album titled Worth Your Love, which is being released at the end of June.
"This album is a big deal for me," she says.
"The songs on it, I just can't wait for everyone to hear the new music.
"I feel like this is me getting back into the music industry."
It's an industry that has completely transformed since Storer started out, teaching music and singing her own songs by the campfire at outback stations in the remote Northern Territory.
When her first album Chasing Buffalo was released in 2001, listeners would hear Storer's tunes on the radio, she made money selling CDs, and her record label had money to spend.
More than two decades later, the mother of four boys has to rely on touring to make a living. It's something she describes as a rollercoaster of variable ticket sales and festival slots that often don't eventuate.
She wonders about the streaming playlists and radio stations that default to imported tunes, when she believes Australian music is top notch.
"People can mock it and say we sound feral or put us down like we're second grade but I love the way Aussies sound," she says.
She name checks John Williamson, Paul Kelly and Missy Higgins - each one an authentic storyteller, just like Storer.
But a US sub-genre known as bro-country, with lyrics about women, whiskey, pick-up trucks and cowboy boots, is currently in vogue instead, she says.
As she prepares to embark on a national tour in July, Storer hopes a more authentic brand of country will soon have a resurgence.
"Especially older generations, they're not going to want to hear bro-country," she says.
"They're going to be starved for someone singing Aussie stories."
As for the future of the industry, Storer is putting her faith in the calibre and originality of Australian music.
"At the end of the day it's about the quality of the songs, being true to yourself as an artist, because that's what really shines through," she says.
"If you sound like everyone else, it's boring and you'll just get skipped."
