Every year, we eagerly anticipate the tradition. A flurry of new Christmas albums and songs grace our streaming platforms, bringing joy and excitement to many. Christmas, above all, is a delightful and engaging streaming strategy. Do Christmas albums and songs truly enhance music streaming? What is the impact of Christmas songs and albums in the music streaming industry?
Christmas albums: a long tradition
It’s almost a compulsory tradition for specific artists, especially music superstars in the United States. You have to have released at least one Christmas album in your career. Elvis Presley, Barbara Streisand, Dolly Parton, Bob Dylan, Ariana Grande, James Brown, Justin Bieber, Céline Dion, the Boyz II Men and dozens of others have done it. Others, like Michael Bublé, have even made a specialty of it. It touches every genre, from Pop to Rap, Folk, Rock, and RnB. No one can escape it. Since music is a matter of emotion, it’s an opportunity to celebrate memories, moments spent with family, or the symbols that Christmas represents. Scientific studies show that Christmas music is calming and often associated with happy, shared moments.
The Economist has noted this, with a study explaining that the time change—and the lengthening of night-time periods—results in a 1.5% spike in streaming music consumption. Similarly, a drop of twenty degrees Fahrenheit results in an increase of 0.1%, and snowfall increases consumption by 2%. The effect is even more pronounced during Christmas: a day spent in the snow increases music streaming consumption by 3%.
These meteorological conditions and emotional considerations create fertile ground for the resounding success of the Christmas music business. By 2022, this sector would have accounted for $177 million in the United States alone. Colossal!
Conrad Whitey, head of Instrumental, an organization that analyzes music streaming data and networks to predict trends, analyzes this change in the following terms for The Guardian :
« Before streaming, Christmas music was about gifting: an album by a known artist, or you’d repackage Christmas tracks as an album. You’d get a lot of radio play for the old songs, but none were released as singles. Streaming has transformed that ».
The impact of Christmas songs on the music streaming industry
The situation is even more complicated with streaming. However, whereas albums used to be sold in record stores, benefiting many artists, statistics show that the most popular songs are often the same. This is thanks to playlists, which have become the preferred means of music consumption. For example, every year, Spotify offers around fifty different playlists dedicated to the festive season and winter. And that’s not counting the thousands of playlists created by users themselves. In stores, on the street, on the radio: as Christmas approaches, the same songs are played repeatedly, sometimes to the point of overdose.
The most obvious example is Mariah Carey’s song “All I Want For Christmas.” The title has become a classic Christmas song over the years and is a colossal financial windfall. While figures vary according to source, experts estimate that Mariah Carey could rake in $10 million a year from the streaming figures generated by her song alone. It was released in 1994 and became the first Christmas song to achieve diamond certification. It has since become a classic that almost everyone has had the opportunity to listen to at least once in their lives. In 2019 alone, the song generates 309 million streams. So much so that every year, it re-enters the charts and dethrones recently released songs.
2018: a proof of the impact of Christmas songs on the music streaming industry
2018 was a particularly revealing year. A Buzz Angle study shows that streams soared by 74 percent over the holiday season, accumulating 110 billion streams. For Genius Media, Billboard’s Senior Director of Charts, Gary Trust, declares:
“It’s just so easy for someone who isn’t even that technologically inclined, who may not be a streaming person throughout the year […] It’s easy for anyone of any age [to say], ‘Alexa play me Christmas music.’ So, we’ve seen a big uptick in the streaming of holiday songs. Amazon itself was a big driver of that list. Holiday music is a shared experience, probably more so than other formats.”
The result? In 2018, Christmas songs occupied 23 places in the top 100 most listened-to songs in the USA—a tidal wave.
Christmas songs and albums: better for “old” artists than new ones?
In 2021, Billboard highlighted a few key points: physical retailers often experience a surge in sales as the year draws to a close, largely due to the purchase of classic Christmas albums. Interestingly, only 4 of the 25 most streamed Christmas songs that year were released in the past decade. This trend underscores the enduring appeal of classic Christmas songs, which continue to resonate with listeners, perhaps out of nostalgia or habit. This suggests that streaming is more lucrative for artists whose albums were released before the streaming era.
This would make it more difficult for artists whose music is recent to carve out a slice of a lucrative cake. In the case of Christmas music, the key to success lies in playlists. Even more popular during the festive season, playlists are an indicator of success. It’s easy to find what you’re looking for among the thousands of playlists available, and in these cases, it’s not a question of discovering something new or letting the algorithms surprise you. On the contrary, listeners want to find some reference point, some comfort in songs they’ve already listened to dozens of times. And they listen to them again, mainly around Christmas.
Nostalgia first
As a result, some artists are reluctant to unveil new music in December. They fear it will be drowned out and go unnoticed. In December, the streaming market is all about nostalgia, while the rest of the year is about discoveries and trends. This is an interesting market evolution, allowing artists to resurface. The rest of them will have to wait our turn, in January, for example!
This reflects a market reality: the shift towards mood-based listening habits. In the case of Christmas mood playlists, what may seem anecdotal is a revelation of an industry that has changed with the arrival of streaming.
Soundiiz & Christmas
As you may have guessed, at Soundiiz, at least for now, we’re not in the business of releasing Christmas songs or albums. While our team is passionate about music and may occasionally burst into song, we haven’t yet ventured into the realm of recording an album. However, we excel at enhancing your streaming music collection, giving you the power to manage, store, and share it as you see fit.
If you have an extensive playlist of Christmas songs, you don’t want to lose it, right? Thanks to our export function, you can download all your playlists in txt or CSV format to store them safely and be sure of finding them again. Using the export function, you can share these playlists with your friends and family, who can import them onto the streaming platform they use daily, thanks to our playlist import function. This creates a virtuous chain of sharing in which your Christmas songs and albums have several lives on different platforms!
Syncing!
It’s also possible that if you use Spotify or Apple Music, the Christmas playlists on Deezer, YouTube Music, or Amazon Music seem better constructed and more to your taste. There are two solutions: the most radical is to leave Spotify or Apple Music for one of these other streaming services. But what if you want to keep your data? By using our Transfer function, which allows you to transfer all your data in just a few minutes, you’ll be able to find everything on the destination platform of your choice.
Another method, without having to switch platforms, is synchronization. Thanks to Soundiiz’s Sync function, you can synchronize playlists from TIDAL, Amazon Music, etc., with your platform. Enjoy the best of both worlds! All thanks to Soundiiz.
Click here to test our services and get the most out of your Christmas playlists and albums!
