Streams ahead: the artists who made it huge without radio support

Thanks to Spotify, Apple Music and co, musicians such as Glass Animals and Anne-Marie can go global without radio support. But can they convert streaming stats into fans?

‘Streaming has been invaluable,” begins Glass Animals singer Dave Bayley, from the back of a tour bus bound for Glasgow. His band’s 2014 song Gooey currently stands at nearly 68m Spotify streams, and was instrumental in turning Glass Animals into what Music Week recently described as “international streaming sensations”. Bayley looks back on the initial streaming success of Gooey with a mixture of confusion and amazement: “We looked at all the streaming services’ viral charts and, for some reason, we were at the top of them. Off the back of that, everything else happened.”

You could be forgiven for raising an eyebrow at the notion of a “streaming artist”. Ten years ago, an unknown singer called Sandi Thom stormed to No 1 after livestreaming gigs from her south London basement. Her success was a masterpiece of implied causality. It wasn’t the livestreams, whose true popularity has since been queried, that rocketed her to No 1 – it was the fact that they provided an irresistible story to the established media.

Related: Drake is Spotify’s most streamed artist of 2016

Related: In the age of the algorithm, the human gatekeeper is back