Australian music history was made on Friday when the National Indigenous Music Awards (NIMA) launched the nation's very first Indigenous Music Chart through a partnership with Radio Monitor and the SGC Group.
Executive Director of NIMA, Mark Smith, said the new chart provides another platform to discover some of the amazing talents of our First Nations people and creates a year-round acknowledgement of Aboriginal artists.
"I think in some ways it's a starting point of another way to recognise, and we just hope people start to engage with it and discover new music through it," Mr Smith said.
"NIMA only happens one day a year, and [this is] a way, across the rest of the year, to keep shining a light on some of the amazing music created by Indigenous musicians."
SGC Group regularly works with Radio Monitor to collect as much data as possible about what is being played via multiple outlets across the country such as community, commercial and regional radio.
The Indigenous music chart is updated with the top 10 most-played Aboriginal artists and songs collected from the different radio stations based on this data.
"Data is being collected anyway, [so] we use it to really shine a clear light on Indigenous music," Mr Smith said.
Mr Smith hopes in time the chart will see more engagement from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.
"Now that's it launched and out there, what we really want is...more of a focus on getting the chart out there as wide as we can so more people can come across it," Mr Smith said. "We hope people will discover new music through it."
The first chart sees Busby Marou's song Sound of Summer taking out the number one spot, followed by Tia Gostelow, Troy Cassar-Daley and Baker Boy.
The chart will be released and updated every Friday and can be found on the National Indigenous Music Awards website, as well as Apple Music and Spotify under the name, 'National Indigenous Music Chart'.
The annual NIMAa have run for 14 years and have a reputation of acknowledging some of the freshest and most loved musical talents around the country.
