Opetaia Foa’i wins APRA AMCOS Billions Award for Moana’s “We Know The Way” streams

Opetaia Foa’i just became the latest recipient of APRA AMCOS’s Billions Award, picking up honors for “We Know The Way,” one of the standout ballads from Disney’s original Moana soundtrack. The award is directly tied to the streaming milestone: the song has reached one billion streams, a figure APRA AMCOS framed as an “incredible achievement” for both Opetaia Foa’i and “We Know the Way.”

The recognition was announced after Foa’i was on hand Thursday night, July 23 at APRA AMCOS’s Sydney headquarters for the award presentation. That matters because this is not a casual industry pat on the back. APRA AMCOS’s Billions Award is designed around songwriter-member rights and publisher rewards, and it takes into account streaming numbers from Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube. In other words, the PRO is turning platform-scale attention into a formal credit event, with a ceremony that makes the achievement legible to the rest of the music economy.

So what exactly is being honored? “We Know The Way” was written alongside Lin-Manuel Miranda and Mark Mancina, and published by Universal Music Publishing. It celebrates the rich voyaging history of Oceanic peoples. Released in 2016, the track includes languages of Tokelau and Sāmoa sung by Opetaia. The Billboard performance footprint is also part of the story. The song logged two weeks on the Billboard Top 100, peaking at No. 93, and was highlighted by Billboard’s Greatest of All Time Disney Songs Chart. That combination matters for operators and executives because it shows how songs can move on two tracks at once: cultural significance and measurable streaming accumulation.

Billboard’s own framing leaned into why this song is different from the average film-ballad formula. The “We Know The Way” moment was described as “historic” for Pacific peoples, with traditional Polynesian performance and storytelling reaching global audiences. That point is important because it helps explain why a streaming milestone can become a strategic signal. Authenticity is not just branding here. In this case, APRA AMCOS’s head of APRA AMCOS NZ, Ant Healey, explicitly connected the massive success of Moana to the power of authenticity and noted that it brought Polynesian languages, culture, and storytelling to global audiences in a “genuine, uplifting and deeply meaningful way.” He also tied that to a broader implication: authentic voices can connect with people everywhere. Whether you are a label executive, a publisher executive, a PRO stakeholder, or an investor underwriting content, the message is that cultural specificity can be commercially scalable.

The award is also anchored in Opetaia Foa’i’s broader creative role, which APRA AMCOS described as a “pivotal role” in shaping the cultural identity of the Moana soundtrack alongside his band, Te Vaka. And the story did not end with the first movie. The source notes that he continued this legacy in the franchise with Moana 2 (2024) and the recently released live action Moana remake. This is where the second-order business logic gets interesting: franchises create a content flywheel, and PRO-backed recognition can reinforce the value of the underlying creative IP. When a songwriter or cultural performer is repeatedly tied to franchise releases, it makes rights administration more than paperwork. It becomes a long-term monetization engine with public milestones that can influence negotiations with publishers, aggregators, streaming services, and downstream licensing partners.

Under the hood, the Billions Award also functions as a precedent for how the industry measures and celebrates digital-era success. The source says it is the first award of its kind to celebrate a songwriter’s streaming achievement, and it is the inspiration for the BPI’s BRIT Billion Award, which the U.K. trade association introduced in 2023. That cross-market influence matters for executives because it signals the direction of travel: if more regions create formal streaming-based songwriter awards, rights societies will have more standardized incentives to track and publicize streaming outcomes. For boards and management teams, that can affect how you evaluate performance reporting, how you forecast income flows tied to catalogs, and how you communicate value to songwriters and publishers.

APRA AMCOS’s “1,000,000,000 List” already includes an array of high-profile artists and specific songs: Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker (“The Less I Know The Better”), Flume (“Never Be Like You”), Troye Sivan and Alex Hope (“Youth”), Tones And I (“Dance Monkey”), 5 Seconds of Summer (“Youngblood”), and SHOUSE (“Love Tonight”). Put differently, Opetaia Foa’i’s inclusion places a Pacific-language, Disney soundtrack ballad into the same structural recognition lane as major global hits. That is the strategic stake for peers in similar roles. It suggests that PRO awards are not only celebrating pop ubiquity, they are also translating international catalog reach into a standardized measure of impact. When that happens, streaming achievements become board-visible, negotiate-able proof points, not just vanity metrics.

For decision-makers, the takeaway is straightforward but easy to underestimate: the infrastructure around music rights is evolving to keep up with platform reality. APRA AMCOS’s Billions Award is built on streaming data from the biggest consumer platforms, converts that into songwriter and publisher recognition, and then amplifies the story with industry visibility. In a market where attention can vanish overnight, formal, streaming-based recognition like this turns long-run listening into something that looks a lot more like durable value.