Powter met producer Jeff Dawson in 1997 and released his debut studio album, I’m Your Betty, on June 21, 2000. The album, limited to a very small print, contains ten songs, two of which—”More Than I” and “Negative Fashion”—were both featured on the television show Higher Ground in the episode “Wherefore Art Thou”.

On May 31, 2005, Powter released his first extended play known as “Free Loop.”

On July 2, 2005, Powter performed at the Berlin installment of Live 8, a simultaneous group of concerts in nine countries intended to raise awareness of poverty in Africa and put pressure on world leaders for aid.

In the United States, “Bad Day” was used extensively on the television series American Idol in its fifth season. Powter sang the song live at the end of the final show of that season on May 23, 2006. The song reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, Adult Top 40 and Adult Contemporary charts, making Powter the first solo Canadian male artist to top the Hot 100 since Bryan Adams in 1995 (with “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?”). The song also reached number one in Powter’s homeland, Canada.

“Bad Day” came in fifth in the British Record of the Year 2005. In 2006, Powter won in the New Artist of the Year category at the Canadian Juno Awards, and was nominated for Best International Breakthrough Act at the BRIT Awards. “Bad Day” was nominated at the 2006 Billboard Music Awards for Hot 100 Single of the Year, and was named Billboard magazine’s song of the year in 2006. At the 2007 Grammy Awards, Powter received a Best Male Pop Vocal Performance nomination for the song.

In March 2008, a song by Japanese singer Haru featuring Powter, “Find My Way”, was released. In September, Powter released his third album, Under the Radar. This was the same year in which he embarked on the Wolfbaggin’ Tour, joining the likes of Alphabeat and Lil Chris.

On March 16, 2009, Powter performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival then in December 2009, Powter was named as the decade’s top One-Hit Wonder by Billboard. The magazine describes one-hit wonders as acts whose second hit did not reach the top 25; they only included acts from 2000 to 2007. Powter’s notoriety is unmistakable, since “Bad Day” is his only Hot 100 hit.

On January 1, 2010, he performed O Canada at the NHL Winter Classic. In that same year, he released his greatest hits album, Best of Me, and with it, recorded three new songs and a new version of the title track to go along with ‘Bad Day’, ‘Jimmy Gets High’, ‘Next Plane Home’ and his other singles. Only one was released as a single: ‘Lose To Win’, on November 10, 2010.

On December 1, 2010, Powter made a tribute to English singer and songwriter John Lennon with his cover version of Happy Xmas (War Is Over). This single was released in Europe, the UK and Japan.

Powter again failed to re-capture the success of “Bad Day.” In 2011, he took a hiatus.

On April 10, 2012, Powter’s new single “Cupid” was released to US and Canadian iTunes stores. Powter’s latest album, Turn on the Lights, was released in July 2012.

On June 13, 2012, Powter also made a tribute to L’Arc-en-Ciel with his variation of the song Stay Away.

On September 10, 2012, he released “Crazy All My Life”.

On December 5, 2012, Powter was featured in a song with Japanese singer May J. titled “Back To Your Heart”. On the 18 he released the single “Christmas Cupid”, which is a Christmas version of his song “Cupid”.

On June 5, 2013, Powter announced on Twitter that he was working on a new album with Jeff Dawson, who co-produced most of his songs in the past, and John Fields, who produced “Crazy All My Life”. He also said: “I’m writing like I did during the first record. I’m not focusing on singles. Otherwise I would try too hard and end up with garbage sort of like Bad Day. I never thought in my wildest dreams that it was a single. I think that’s what writing from your heart is. Just like anything else. When you try too hard, it really isn’t worthy of anything… So I stay open and just let the songs write themselves.”

On July 15, 2013, Powter performed at the National Association of Drug Court Professionals performing “Bad Day” and “Whole World Around.” Matthew Perry also attended the event.

On August 9, 2013, he performed at the Festival of Friends.

On September 5, 2013, Powter later released 4 new songs as bonus tracks for his album Turn on the Lights called Ur My Radio, Doesn’t Matter, Cheers To Us and Goodbye.

Powter disclosed in July 2013 that he was sexually abused by a female babysitter for three years starting from age 7 and turned to drugs and alcohol to get over his guilt and shame. He said in an interview

On November 27, 2016, Powter performed at The 39th Jazz Goes To Campus Festival performing Bad Day.

On January 6, 2017, Powter released a new single called “Delicious.” The music video has been uploaded to his official YouTube channel on March 14, 2017.

On December 10, 2017, Powter performed at the President’s Star Charity event in Singapore singing Bad Day and joined Sandra Riley Tang in a duet with her song “Save Myself.”

On April 6, 2018, Powter released a new single called “Perfect For Me.” On April 13, he released his fourth extended play known as Daniel Powter. There are 4 songs in this album: a remastered remix of Bad Day, Tell Them Who You Are in an acoustic version, his 2017 single “Delicious” and his 2018 single “Perfect For Me.”

On September 21, 2018, Powter released a single known as “Do You Wanna Get Lucky” and Perfect for Me was later re-recorded and released on the same day for the Asia market. The re-recorded version features a slightly modified arrangement and cleaner tune as well as a shorter song length of two minutes and fifty-four seconds. These two singles were followed by third called “Survivor” released on October 26.