Whether you’re driving home for it, having a holly jolly one, or lamenting the regifting of a heart – it’s likely that music is at the centre of your Christmas celebrations.
And the US isn’t even the biggest player of Christmas music – it’s far more popular in Germany, according to research by the World Airplay Radio Monitor. Slade singer Noddy Holder once described having a Christmas hit as like winning the lottery every 25th of December.The British Performing Right Society, which handles royalty payments in the UK, once claimed ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’ was the most heard song in the world.
‘All I Want For Christmas’ had apparently earned $60m in royalties by 2017. It came out in 1994, so if you do the sums that’s roughly $2.6m a year. It famously missed out on the top spot when it came out, and it took until 2020 before it got there, but all the while it’s been an extremely popular song. It’s been in the top 40 in the UK 18 times since it came out.
And while sharing the wealth is a normal part of music royalties, there are a few clever, creative people that have managed to maximise their return on their Christmas hits. Though it can also show just how hard record labels and artists try to get onto the Christmas bandwagon.It has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas – and the original video was just them performing the song in a studio.
It’s a song with religious references – but it’s not what you’d call a Christmas or even a religious song.Obviously there are traditional Christmas songs that have been sung for hundreds of years, but the era of the modern Christmas classic probably only kicks in in the 1940s. But of course even when Christmas songs weren’t the most popular, they would still be selling well under the surface, and people would still be listening to them on the radio, buying the CD or streaming tracks.Exactly – it used to be the case that Christmas albums would sell well at this time of year, but that’s not really the case any more.
And if you’re one of the lucky artists that’s managing hundreds of thousands or even millions of streams each Christmas, that translates to thousands or even tens or hundreds of thousands of euro in the space of a few weeks.Actually streaming has created an interesting, new dynamic in Christmas music – and in a way it’s led to a bit of a revival of the industry.