Pop on the podium, EDM dominates — Here’s Australia’s Hottest 100 live events of 2024

In today’s world where we’re voting with our wallets and with a wealth of live events data under our belt, we took to analysing the nearly 1M “votes” cast – aka, Tixel waitlist spots taken up by Aussies in our second annual Hottest 100 Live Events list.

The list ranks the length of waitlists for tickets on Tixel to a huge range of (usually sold out) live events. As you can buy/sell a ticket to any kind of live event on Tixel (humble brag: Tixel is the #1 ticket resale marketplace in Australia), we interpret these numbers as the best agnostic marker of demand for live events in our industry, regardless of the promoter, ticketer or event organiser. And as Triple J does a bang up job of presenting the trending songs of 2024, we present to you… the 100 hottest live events of 2024.

Here were the top 10 performers:

• Taylor Swift (Duh)
• Coldplay
• Olivia Rodrigo
• Fred again…
• SZA
• Dom Dolla
• Hozier
• Tate McRae
• Noah Kahan
• Matt Rife

Qween Taylor Swift is a big obvi in our #1 slot, but it still deserves commentary after her sell-out The Eras Tour dates in Melbourne and Sydney sat a clear 70,000 waitlisters above #2 Coldplay. There was a lot of Pop up the top of the list, reinforcing our choice to spend on sure bets when it comes to entertainment spending whether it’s pop princesses/princes like Olivia Rodrigo (#3), Tate McRae (#8), Benson Boone (#22) and Gracie Abrams (#33) or pop OGs like Pink (#26) and Niall Horan (#50). Not pop, but a shout-out to R&B singer-songwriter SZA at #5 kicking it with the big guns.

There were a few hot comedy acts with people gagging over sometimes controversial American crowd work expert, Matt Rife (#10) alongside Tenacious D (#38) and Theo Von (#86). Sports also fared well, with the Formula 1 Aussie Grand Prix driving strong demand (#11), as well as a number of AFL matches (including the AFL Grand Final at #23), and the State of Origin III decider (#75).

Aussie punters went wild for electronic music with around a third of the rankings taken by electronic artists + events like Fred again.. (#4), Dom Dolla (#6), and STÜM (#36) as well as events/series/festivals including Boiler Room (Melbourne + Sydney at #12), Out 2 Lunch Festival (#27), Pitch Music & Arts Festival and Harbourlife. Techno drove hot demand (hello Teletech at #28 + Sara Landry at #33) as well as Hardstyle events like Knockout Outdoor (#24) and Midnight Mafia (#25). In our ticketing report last year, we uncovered that 63% of festival-goers preferred genre-focused events (like those above) rather than those offering a wide-ranging mix like Beyond the Valley (#38), Wildlands (#73) and Lost Paradise (#76).

As touring success traditionally follows charting success, Triple J’s Hottest 100 gives us somewhat of a leading indicator — we can expect big ticket numbers this year from high-ranking artists (that didn’t come to Australia in 2024) like Charli xcx (thank you Laneway!) and Billie Eilish (preview: the Tixel waitlists/numbers of tickets trading for Billie’s shows are already big). Should we be graced with an appearance by Chappell Roan (who dominated the Hottest 100), we can expect a fight for tickets. And while she isn’t a Triple J-type artist, we expect Sabrina Carpenter to drive big numbers if her Short N Sweet tour hits Australia this year. There are some notable omissions from our list like Triple J hottest 100 (2024) darlings Spacey Jane who took 2024 off touring in Aus.

So how did Aussie acts rank? Of the 67 single artist-led events represented in our hottest 100 events list, Aussie artists sat in second place with 15 events led by Australian talent (22%), trailing American artists who scooped up 1/3 of the rankings with 22. The UK sat in third with 12 (18%). There were 14 different countries of origin represented. This percentage of Australians is slightly lower than the Triple J hottest 100, which saw 29 of the top 100 songs claimed by Aussie artists. The five Aussie performers recording the hottest demand for their shows were Dom Dolla, Missy Higgins, STÜM, Cold Chisel and metalcore outfit, Parkway Drive. Honourable mentions go to Troye Sivan and X CLUB. As part of the Australian live music ecosystem, we’ll be doing what we can to elevate Aussie artists with the hopes we see this percentage increase in 2025.

Lastly, shout out to girl power, with women artists representing half of all waitlisted fans in the top 100, despite having only 25% of the rankings. Yes, some of this was driven by Taylor but not all, and it’s safe to say that while the quantity of women performers may be underrepresented in the top 100, artists like Taylor, Olivia, Tate, SZA, Laufey and Missy have rabid fanbases and know how to pull massive crowds, with numbers towering over their male counterparts.

So without further adieu, here’s the full list of 100 — dig in!