People say Christmas comes earlier all the time. And they're not wrong — pretty well everyone knows those department stores that put up decorations in September. But when it comes to Christmas music, we're stuck in a time loop. The same songs. Year after year after year.
The Hearing Care Partnership analyzed more than 2,000 Spotify Christmas playlists in 2024, and guess who's still at the top? Mariah Carey. Yes, that song. Again. Even though the song's listenership dropped by 35% from October 2023 to October 2024. And then it fell another 22% from November 2023 to November 2024.
And recent polls from the UK showed that it is the least favorite song across the pond and that 19.5% of British people would rather do their Christmas shopping on December 24 than listen to "All I Want for Christmas Is You." While there's not many fresh polls in the US on the subject matter, back in 2020 22% of Americans disliked it. And I can only assume that the numbers have only gone up a few billion listens later.
So what's really going on here? Are people getting tired of Christmas music? And if they are, why is the most-hated Christmas song still at the top of every playlist? More importantly — where's all the new Christmas music?
It could be simple: maybe people just like old stuff. Or maybe — and this is the real question — there's something else going on. Something about how streaming services work, or how record labels decide what we listen to during the holidays.
The truth might be hiding somewhere between nostalgia and business decisions. And that's what we're going to analyze.
The Industry's Role
Christmas music is big business. And big business means big money moves behind the scenes, flowing between record labels and streaming platforms. Sweet deals get made. And pretty well everyone wins — except new artists trying to make holiday music. Because Christmas music is quite the golden goose.
In 2022, Billboard reported that Mariah's holiday hit made $8.5 million in global revenue and publishing royalties. And that's just one year. The Economist calculated that between 1994 and 2016, she made £47.3 million from this single song. That's about £2 million every year — pretty good for six weeks of doing nothing annually.
"The dominance of established Christmas classics is deeply tied to industry practices like 'pay to play,'" says Chad Gerber, Founder & CIO at Meloscene, company developing virtual collaboration studio for musicians, "While it's rarely openly discussed, labels legally negotiate deals with streaming platforms to prioritize specific catalogs. Holiday classics are an easy, profitable choice due to their guaranteed audience appeal."
So the old songs stay on top because someone paid good money to keep them there. And they paid that money because these songs make even more money back. It's quite the system.
But there's more to this story. "These agreements ensure better streaming payouts for label controlled catalogs while newer, independent holiday tracks receive little to no promotional push," Gerber adds.
And Mariana Timony, Senior Editor at Bandcamp, music discovery platform, points out something interesting about trying to make new Christmas hits: "I feel it would be really difficult to force people to adopt a song as a new classic, even if it were given a boost via algorithm, playlisting, etc. Such a strategy seems antithetical to the spirit of the holidays, which is about celebrating authentic connections and memories."
Amazon Music tried something big in 2024. They got Tom Grennan, Laufey, and the Elevator Boys to make new Christmas songs. Put them right at the top of playlists. Gave them prime spots on the homepage. They even got Angus & Julia Stone to do "The Christmas Song" and Camilo & Evaluna to make a Spanish version of "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas."
But these songs are Amazon Music exclusives. So even if people liked them (and some might), they're stuck in one place. They can't spread across Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music. They can't get that massive exposure that made Mariah and Wham! into Christmas royalty.
"The sheer market saturation of music has reduced the centralized, large-scale promotion once afforded to Christmas songs," Gerber explains. "Without the same distribution advantages of traditional radio or studio backed campaigns, new holiday tracks struggle to compete against the embedded presence of classics."
So we end up with this weird situation: The platforms want new songs (because new content brings subscribers). The labels want old songs (because they're guaranteed money makers). And somewhere in between, Christmas music got stuck in the past. But what do humans want?
The Psychology of Holiday Music
You might think older people are the ones getting all misty-eyed about Christmas songs from their youth. Well, surprisingly a 2023 study showed that 50% of Gen Z feels nostalgic about old media, followed by 47% of millennials. And music? It hits that sweet spot for 46% of consumers.
When people listen to old songs, 53% say they feel happy. Another 40% feel comforted. So maybe that's why we can't quit Mariah, even when we say we want to.
"The holidays can be a really emotional time so it's no surprise that we crave familiarity and comfort in what we listen to," says Mariana Timony, Senior Editor at Bandcamp. "What is more familiar and comforting than songs you've been hearing since childhood?"
Chad Gerber from Meloscene explains how this all started: "The 'sound of Christmas' for most listeners was defined decades ago by their grandparents' and parents' choices. Songs from artists like Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, and Brenda Lee established a sensory pattern tied to warm childhood memories."
And this cycle keeps going. Your grandparents played Bing Crosby. Your parents added Mariah Carey. And now you're playing both — while complaining about hearing them in stores in October.
Timony points out: "People complaining about hearing 'Jingle Bells' in October just proves how much we associate holiday music with the holiday season."
The technology helped too. "The relationship between broadcast radio and vinyl records in the mid 20th century further cemented this phenomenon," Gerber says. "For the first time, families could own and replay the 'radio sound' of Christmas in their homes, perpetuating those same sonic elements year after year."
So we're stuck in this loop. Each generation adds maybe one or two songs to the Christmas canon. And those songs get played, and replayed, and replayed some more. As Timony puts it: "Ultimately there is no other niche genre of music that soundtracks so many lives and has so many people reaching for it at a single time."
We might keep saying we want something new. But when December comes around, we press play on the same old playlist. And we feel pretty good about it too — at least 53% of us do. It’s just pure psychology.
Hivemind and stagnation of Christmas music
So I did something pretty stupid while working on this piece — I got myself banned from Reddit. But it was worth it because I wanted to understand what people really think about Christmas music. And well, I found out (at least that part they are saying out loud).
I scraped thousands of comments from the most viral Reddit discussions about Christmas music. And then used AI to help me make sense of all that data (there's only so much coffee one tiny person can drink while reading Reddit comments).
A thread asked why Christmas music became stagnant. Another popular one wondered why we only hear the same 30 songs covered 100 times. And one fed-up person just straight up complained about the lack of variety. The list of the viral threads goes on and on.
Here’s what an AI analysis of all the comments (upvotes were weighted in) showed: about 40% of comments mentioned nostalgia and tradition. People want their Christmas songs like they want their grandmother's cookie recipe — unchanged and reliable. Another 25% blamed market saturation. Too many new songs coming out all the time, but none of them stick.
And speaking of sticking — 20% of people think new Christmas songs are too commercial. They say you can smell the money grab from a mile away. The remaining 15% think the old songs are so good, nothing new can compete.
Some Redditors pointed out that streaming has made things worse. Short attention spans meet endless playlists. And guess what wins? The same old songs your parents played, and their parents before them.
The really sad part? People are making new Christmas music. But it's like throwing a snowball into an avalanche — it just gets buried under the streams of Mariah and Wham!
Breaking the Christmas Tunes Ice
So where does it leave us and what do we do? Maybe success in Christmas music doesn't mean becoming the next Mariah Carey and have people in black suits conspire for it to work out? Well, at least that's what some people in the industry think.
"I think we need to re-define the idea of 'making it' when it comes to holiday music," says Mariana Timony, Senior Editor at Bandcamp. "While they're certainly not enjoying Mariah Carey-levels of visibility, in the past decade and beyond independent artists have been putting out lovely, low key holiday records that pop up in unusual places."
She mentions Sufjan Stevens and his multiple Christmas albums. And then there's Low's "Just Like Christmas" — you might have heard it while shopping, but you probably didn't know who made it. These songs made it into the Christmas rotation without making headlines.
"I think it'd be great to see indie labels doing more holiday music in the spirit of Phil Spector's A Christmas Gift For You. For example, I think a Third Man Records holiday compilation would be so much fun and they would do such a beautiful job with it."
And maybe that's the answer. Stop playing those generic Spotify Christmas playlists on repeat and make your own. And if you are a musician just make something new that matters to you and your listeners. Because Christmas music isn't going anywhere. But maybe, if we really want to, we can take it somewhere new?
