Last week I discovered something rather unexpected in my Spotify statistics.

Of all the places on Earth where people were listening to my music, Nuuk in Greenland was number one.

At the time, I treated this as a charming statistical curiosity. Perhaps one particularly determined person had accidentally left one of my albums playing on repeat. Perhaps there was a café somewhere overlooking a Greenlandic fjord where the owner had developed an inexplicable attachment to my songs.

I assumed normal service would eventually resume. It hasn’t.

Nuuk is still number one.

And not just by a whisker. According to Spotify, Nuuk remains some way ahead of Melbourne and Bangkok, which currently occupy the chasing positions.

This raises an important question.

What exactly do the people of Nuuk know that the rest of the world doesn’t?

Because something is clearly happening up there. Perhaps word has spread. Maybe somebody played one of my songs to a friend, who played it to another friend, and before long half of Greenland was quietly nodding along while Melbourne wondered what it had missed.

There may now be Sean Kearns listening parties. There may be heated discussions in Nuuk bars about the merits of individual album tracks. There may even be someone saying, “I preferred the earlier stuff,” which would mean I have finally achieved proper musical credibility.

Meanwhile, Melbourne and Bangkok really need to raise their game. I’m not saying this is a competition. But it obviously is. Melbourne is a city internationally associated with music, culture and creativity. Bangkok has millions of people. Nuuk has a population that would comfortably fit inside some football stadiums.

And yet Nuuk is winning. Comfortably.

Frankly, the rest of the world should be embarrassed. London, where are you? New York? Los Angeles? Liverpool, a city with a reasonably respectable musical history, surely you can manage something?

Even my own part of the world appears to be watching events unfold from a safe distance while Greenland quietly gets on with the important business of listening to Sean Kearns.

I’m beginning to think there may be something about my music that works particularly well in Arctic conditions. Perhaps the songs improve dramatically below freezing. Maybe Spotify has an algorithm specifically designed for long winter evenings, spectacular mountains and people who appreciate a slightly melancholic chord change.

Whatever it is, I am extremely grateful.

One of the peculiar joys of releasing music independently is that you never really know where it is going to travel. A song can be written in one small corner of the world, recorded at home, uploaded to the internet and somehow find its way to somebody thousands of miles away.

And occasionally, apparently, quite a few somebodies. So once again: thank you, Nuuk. You discovered something before everybody else.

Now it is up to Melbourne, Bangkok and the rest of civilisation to catch up. And if Nuuk is still sitting at number one a few months from now, I may have to stop joking about the Greenland tour. I’ll just need someone in Nuuk to tell me where I’m playing.