There are moments in life when faith is rewarded, and this is one of them. Nuuk is back.

After being overtaken first by Melbourne and then Sydney, the good people of Greenland have returned to the top of my Spotify listener statistics. Nuuk is once again the place on earth where more people are listening to my music than anywhere else, and I would like to pretend I remained calm and dignified while they were away from the top spot.

I did not.

There were difficult days. Melbourne arrived and displaced Nuuk with almost indecent confidence, Sydney then swept past Melbourne, Brisbane appeared in the rankings, and Perth joined in too. For a while it looked as though Australia had collectively decided that listening to my music was now a national responsibility. Meanwhile, Nuuk slipped away and I tried not to take it personally, which of course meant I took it personally.

This was never just a statistic. Nuuk and I had history. It was the city that first made me realise how wonderfully strange streaming can be. I had never been there, never promoted my music there, never knowingly met anyone from there and certainly never devised a marketing plan aimed at Greenland. Yet for months, Nuuk listened. That made no sense whatsoever, which is exactly why I loved it.

And now they are back.

The interesting thing is that the Australians have not gone anywhere. Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Brisbane are all close behind, which raises a question I am completely unqualified to answer: what is it about my music that seems to appeal to people either in the frozen North or as far downunder as it is possible to get?

There does not appear to be much middle ground. Apparently my natural audience is either wrapped in several layers looking out across Greenlandic ice or sitting somewhere in Australia in considerably better weather. This is not a demographic profile I remember discussing when I started writing songs.

Perhaps there is something in the music that works especially well at geographical extremes. Maybe songs recorded quietly at home in Britain somehow become more convincing the further they travel. Perhaps there is an ideal listening latitude. I would be interested to know, but the truth is that I have absolutely no idea why this is happening.

That is part of what makes it so enjoyable.

Spotify can tell me where people are listening, but not really why they are listening. The numbers give you just enough information to become interested and nowhere near enough to explain anything. Nuuk being number one is therefore left entirely open to interpretation, and my preferred interpretation is simply excellent taste.

Australia clearly has plenty of that too. Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Brisbane all sitting close behind means this is no longer one rogue Australian city accidentally listening to a playlist. There appears to be a pattern developing, and I am becoming, in a very modest and statistically delicate way, an Anglo-Greenlandic-Australian musical phenomenon.

I appreciate that nobody else is calling me this, but that does not mean I cannot.

There is something genuinely fascinating underneath all the joking. I am an independent musician recording songs at home. I build the tracks myself, send the stems to Jermaine Nelson-Williams to bring his production and mixing expertise to them, then release the finished songs through streaming services. Once they are released, they can go anywhere.

That still feels extraordinary to me.

A song can begin with me sitting at home with a guitar, a keyboard or Cubase and end up in somebody’s headphones in Nuuk, Melbourne, Sydney, Perth or Brisbane. I may never meet that person, and they may never know anything about me beyond the song they are hearing, but for those few minutes something I made becomes part of their day.

That is one of the best things about streaming.

There are plenty of frustrations attached to the modern streaming world. The financial returns for independent musicians are tiny, getting noticed is difficult, and there is more music available than anyone could listen to in several lifetimes. But geography is no longer the barrier it once was.

Years ago, getting independent music into Greenland or Australia would have required distribution, radio contacts, record shops, physical stock, postage, luck and probably somebody who knew somebody. Now a listener can find a song almost anywhere, and apparently they do.

That unpredictability is also reassuring because it reminds me that you never really know who your audience is going to be. We tend to imagine listeners as people like ourselves, perhaps living nearby or sharing the same background, but streaming constantly proves otherwise.

Music travels without asking permission. It crosses borders, climates and time zones, and a song written in one place can mean something completely different somewhere else. Perhaps that is part of the answer to why Nuuk and Australia keep appearing. Maybe there is no specific cultural explanation at all. Maybe songs simply connect where they connect.

A lyric can work in Greenland just as easily as it can in Sydney. A melody does not need a passport. A guitar part is not concerned about the temperature outside. That is one of the wonderful things about music.

Still, I cannot help enjoying the geography.

There is something deeply satisfying about opening the Spotify statistics and seeing Nuuk back at number one. It feels like an old friend has returned home after briefly allowing the Australians to look after the place.

No offence to Australia, of course, because Australia deserves considerable credit. Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Brisbane are all right there. The Australians have clearly decided not to surrender quietly, and I respect that.

We may now be witnessing the early stages of a major international struggle for control of my Spotify statistics. I realise the world has more pressing concerns, but this one is mine.

So congratulations, Nuuk. You are back where you belong, at least for now.

And thank you to everyone listening in Greenland, Australia and everywhere else. I genuinely appreciate every play, wherever it comes from. For an independent musician, seeing songs travel thousands of miles is a small reminder that putting music out into the world is still worth doing.

As for Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Brisbane, I would not give up just yet. Nuuk has regained the lead, but it is close, and if history has taught us anything, it is that my entirely unnecessary Spotify geography championship can change very quickly.