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    • Dec 30, 2023
    • 2 min read

The Flourish of Live Music in 2023

Eva Anido recaps the live music scene of 2023, celebrating both national and international acts that rocked Aussie venues this year!


The live music sector has finally made its long awaited comeback in Australia. Whilst in 2022, we saw the first flickers of live music’s return it wasn’t until 2023 that we really saw the industry flourish. World tours were announced, fans crashed sites, festival culture thrived, and moshes moshed.


Here’s a quick recap of what you may have missed, and what you can look forward to next year.


Many world tours and packed festival setlists had international artists hit our shores in 2023. This was a big post pandemic milestone for many international artists like Ed Sheeran, who had not toured Australia since 2018. It was also Australia’s first time experiencing new artists live such as Pink Pantheress and Ice Spice. This year we saw massive artists among the likes of Lizzo, Phoebe Bridgers, and Post Malone headlining our local music festivals. All in all, Australia was truly blessed this year with the amount of international artists coming to pay a visit down under.



But let's not forget about the locals. Among all of these high profile gigs, Aussie bands and performers also thrived. National favourites Spacey Jane and Ocean Alley dominated the festival circuit, as well as their own national tours. With Spacey Jane performing a total of 35 shows this year so far, and Ocean Alley with a whopping 55 shows. Ocean Alley also provided an iconic set at Splendour In The Grass this year, as they stepped up for Lewis Capaldi who was unable to attend. 


Speaking of Splendour… the vibes were high and the grass was dry. The reputation of splendour being in the grass rather than in the mud was certainly redeemed this year. The headliners did not disappoint. Between Tove Lo flashing a crowd of around 30,000 people to Flume bringing out guest after guest, there was little room to be bored. The festival was crawling with local food trucks and small businesses along with pop up nightclubs to dance the night away when your favourite sets were over.


Some oldies but goodies also showed their faces on Australian stages once again. This included the controversial announcement that Coldplay would be playing a “one-off-show” in WA. This left many fans quite outraged, as this was the bands first show in Australia in 7 years and they chose the most remote capital city to play in [1]. The Red Hot Chilli Peppers also returned to Aus, supported by Post Malone, to promote their new album. 


Along with all of these insane shows and festival sets, 2023 was also the year of crashing ticketing websites. With the announcement of Taylor Swift's Era’s Tour breaking the internet worldwide, it was no surprise that Australian Swifties broke records with the amount of digital traffic on the ticketing website [4]. Abel Makkonen Tesfaye is another exciting artist set to hit Australian stages later this year for what is said to be his last tour under his stage name, The Weeknd.


Thank you 2023 for blessing our ears, let's bring on 2024.





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