SYDNEY, Australia — Those dangerous-looking ARIA Awards are now safely in the possession of this year’s respective winners, though the industry is still soaking up the spoils.
Labels association ARIA today (Dec. 3) announces “a record year of engagement across Australia and the world,” through its new partnership with Spotify for the annual ARIA Awards.
Two weeks after the 2025 ARIAs, organizers report 696,836 public votes were cast across Spotify and the ARIA website, a total that’s more than 200% up from the previous year.
The sum is broken down to 614,490 via Spotify and 82,316 via aria.com.au, for one of the “strongest” votes in the awards’ 39-year history.
Music fans were this year invited to vote on four categories: song of the year, best Australian live act, best video, and most popular international artist.
According to ARIA, the three Australia-led categories all captured “significant support,” with 201,224 votes for song of the year, 115,419 for best Australian live act, and 79,668 for best video.
Earlier, the recording industry’s flagship awards ceremony boasted the largest industry vote to-date, with round one and two votes reaching 14,998, a record combined number and a record for each round.
This year’s ceremony also notched a record number of entries received, at 1,387.
On social channels, the awards drew 3.1 million TikTok views on ARIA’s account over Awards week, representing a 1,000% increase week-on-week increase, in addition to 45,000-plus “likes” or reactions on ARIA’s own social across Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, LinkedIn and Facebook.
“This year’s awards have shown just how powerfully Australians can rally around our artists when we deliver the right platform to celebrate their stories and profile their success,” comments ARIA CEO Annabelle Herd.
The stats across ARIA’s socials “are a tiny portion of hundreds of thousands of mentions from artists, creators and fans that have inundated us over the last two weeks,” Herd adds. “The impact and reach of this year on social has far eclipsed anything we’ve seen before.”
Ahead of next year’s 40th ARIA Awards, the trade body this year struck a three-year partnership with Spotify, ending a years-long alliance with YouTube.
The new relationship with Spotify “has been a game-changer for accessibility, but what we’ve seen over the past fortnight is the entire ecosystem moving in unison,” reckons Herd. “It’s an incredible result for Australian music’s night of nights, and an even stronger outcome for Australian artists.”
On the big night, Amyl and The Sniffers bagged four awards, ahead of Ninajirachi (with three) and Dom Dolla (two).
