That’s The Voice. Like Australian Idol, it is a star-making machine. Unlike Idol, the only careers The Voice aims to boost is those of their judges. It is set up to deliver success — just not to the musicians who carry the entire show week to week, courting viewers and voters. The singers put their entire lives on pause for months on end as they rack up debts, halt careers and sign contracts that tie them to a specific record label, despite seemingly having the most career leverage they will ever achieve.

Then, if they are lucky enough to actually win, as Diana Rouvas did on Sunday night, they release a single and an album without any further support from the show that gave them their big boost.

YOU’RE THE VOICE

EMI, the record label tasked with selling the record, has an uphill battle on its hands with Rouvas. The label’s managing director, John O’Donnell, co-manages Cold Chisel, signed Silverchair, Jebediah and Something for Kate during the ’90s, and once worked as music editor of Rolling Stone Australia. He knows the music industry inside and out and has long worked out how to sell records. But The Voice operates on a completely different model, one based on the success of a television show first, and promotional opportunities for its celebrity judges second. The winner doesn’t even make the podium.

There are two main factors that work against the winner of The Voice being a sales success. First, the winner’s single, their only real chance at making a chart splash based on the show’s momentum, comes out on Sunday night, giving the song only five full days of streaming and radio play, compared to the usual seven. All major label singles, with the odd exception, come out on Friday so they have the full week of streams and sales to count towards the next week’s chart, which is released on Saturday.

Second, the show offers no real showcase opportunities for the artists after the glitter from the finale has been hosed off the stage. The show’s focus on the judges to the exclusion of anything else means any promotional opportunities afforded by such a platform are given to the judges. Nobody cares about the new independently released single by last season’s fourth-place-getter.

The winner is decided by a public vote, too, meaning EMI has no actual input in signing and developing the artist at a grassroots level. Instead, the label has the backward task of promoting someone it didn’t choose to sign, whose popularity is waning from the very day they sign to the label and put out their first single. It’s the opposite of the slow, steady career build most artists experience.

Here is a list of the judges who have appeared on The Voice: Delta Goodrem, Joel and Benji Madden, Seal, Ricky Martin, Keith Urban, Kylie Minogue, Jessie J, will.i.am, Ronan Keating, Kelly Rowland, Boy George, Joe Jonas and Idol defector Guy Sebastian. No doubt, anyone who lives in Australia knows at least two judges who have appeared on The Voice. The promotional material for the show focuses exclusively on them. Any pre-season promotion for the show is focused on which judges are returning or leaving, or which washed-up overseas pop star will be coaching. If Kyle and Jackie O are going to interview anyone about The Voice, it’s going to be Delta, Guy or Kelly.

This is a winning ratings formula for Channel 9 and ITV, and has been since 2012, so there’s no impetus to change anything.

TRY AND UNDERSTAND IT

Let’s take a look back at a few of the past winners, to see how rough they’ve had it, post-finale.

Paging: Alfie Arcuri. Now, Alfie was a great singer, delivering weeks of Adele-level balladry that saw him take out season five in 2016. After 1.3 million people watched him take the crown, they all rushed out to buy his music. Or at least, that was the plan. In actuality, only 1458 people bought his single and it debuted in the chart at a paltry #89. That’s 0.11 per cent of viewers. The next week it dropped to #298, selling an extra 482 copies.

During the same finale episode, judges Joel and Benji Madden premiered their new Good Charlotte single Life Can’t Get Much Better to these same 1.3 million viewers. A few weeks later, their new album debuted on the Australian charts at #1. It’s clear to see where the promotional focus was.

Alfie’s follow-up single didn’t come for another 10 months and scraped into the charts at #96. He was last seen in January, auditioning to represent Australia in Eurovision.

Season seven winner Sam Perry was the first to co-write his winner’s single, which was at least a step forward for artist autonomy. The song is called Trust Myself and perhaps he shouldn’t have — it debuted the week after the finale aired at #78, with 2414 sales. A follow-up single, Looking For Light was released to coincide with a nine-date Australian tour. It failed to chart in the top 100.

Other winners and their singles’ highest positions include: season four’s Ellie Drennan (2015, #14), season three’s Anja Nissen, who didn’t even release a winner’s single and whose album sold fewer than 2000 copies in its first week, and season six’s Judah Kelly, whose Count On Me actually had a respectable first week, selling 7980 copies to hit #19.

Now, let’s compare this to Australian Idol, which was a legitimate star factory. The show was a springboard, helping many contestants, and not just the winners, launch long-term careers. Ricki Lee Coulter, Lisa Mitchell and Matt Corby all had multiple platinum-selling records between them; Anthony Callea and Casey Donovan are still public figures and gainfully employed; and Shannon Noll is the current prime minister of Australia.

And let’s not forget Guy Sebastian, who fits his coaching and judging duties on The Voice around recording #1 albums and touring off the back of a hit-laden set built over 16 years. His single from 2012, Battle Scars, sold more than a million copies in America and his latest single, Choir, is in the Australian top 10 right now.

THE GOOD OLD DAYS

The first two seasons of The Voice were different. The winner was actually the focus of the show. At least for a week.

In 2012, on the first season, Karise Eden captivated Australian audiences to the extent that her winner’s single and three of her live Voice performances, available to buy digitally, all entered the top five after the finale aired, the first time such a feat had been achieved since The Beatles in 1964. An undeniable success story.

A week later, however, nobody cared. Her live performance of Stay With Me Baby dropped from #1 to #54, the biggest fall from the top spot in Australian chart history. I Was Your Girl, also a live performance from the show, debuted at #3 and left the top 100 the next week, while the others politely coughed and shuffled off the chart.

The next year, Harrison Craig landed eight songs within the top 100 in the week that he won, scoring a number one album the following week. Craig has had the most sustained career of any winner from the show, with two subsequent albums debuting at #5 and #36.

WHY WOULD YOU GO ON THE VOICE?

So, considering the poor track record, the draconian contractual obligations, and the quick career drop off if you manage to win, why would you go on The Voice?

Put bluntly, it’s a great showcase — as long as you treat the show as the pinnacle, and not as a means to an end. Singing your heart out on national TV in front of millions is certainly nothing to be sneezed at. But The Voice won’t give you a music career, no matter how much you nail the big notes.

Judging by midweek sales projections, Diana Rouvas, who won The Voice in front of more than a million Australian viewers on Sunday night, won’t even debut in the ARIA Top 50, and may not even made the top 100.

The Voice will, however, provide a nice sales bump for one lucky artist — Guy Sebastian. His latest single Choir will certainly climb a few places off the back of Sunday night’s rating bonanza, possibly even sliding into the top 5.

And so, after winning Australian Idol in 2003, it would appear that Guy Sebastian is the real winner of The Voice in 2019. Go the fro!

Nathan Jolly is a Sydney-based writer who specialises in pop culture, music history, true crime and true romance | @nathanjolly