State Champ Radio christmas music
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Mariah Carey‘s holiday classic, “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” is the gift that keeps on giving for its writers and label. In 2021, the master recording of Carey’s version of her song, co-written with Walter Afanasieff, generated 1.747 million song consumption units in the U.S., according to Luminate. Of that, 48,000 were from track downloads, 200 million came from on-demand audio streams, 52.5 million came from video on-demand streams and 24 million from programmed streams.
Combined, those plays and downloads generated $1.36 million for Carey and her label, Sony Music, Billboard estimates.
Meanwhile, the song’s publishing, including mechanicals for the track from the physical sales of five Carey albums it appears on brought in another $378,000 last year.
However, the U.S. only accounted for 51% of download sales and 30.7% of on-demand streaming, so when you look at the song globally and take into account a total of 94,000 song downloads and 823 million streams, Billboard estimates that in 2021 the Carey master recording version of the song brought in almost $4.5 million, while its publishing royalties generated another $1.66 million. Combined, that comes to $6.16 million in global revenue and publishing royalties.
Of the master recording revenue, Billboard estimates Carey’s royalties at $1.55 million, which would leave Sony with $2.95 million.
As for publishing, she is one of two songwriters credited on the song —Afanasieff being the other — so if they each wrote 50%, that means that Carey’s share of the publishing would be $830,000. If she owns her publishing, after a 10% administration fee her take home pay would be $747,000. If she has a 75/25 co-publishing deal, her share would be just over $622,000; and if she doesn’t own the publishing on that song, her publishing royalties would be about $415,000.
This estimate excludes cover versions of the song and the revenue from whatever financial arrangements were struck for Christmas TV specials and soundtracks from those television shows.
According to Songview, the joint ASCAP and BMI song database system, the publishers for Carey’s holiday staple are Beyondidoliztion and Universal Music Corp, both administered by Universal Music Corp., which probably means Universal Music Publishing Group; Sony/ATV Tunes Inc. and Tavla Vista Music, both administered by Sony Music Publishing; and Higpnosis SFH I Ltd, administered by Kobalt.
Since the business of Christmas music is growing so fast – it occupies five of the top 10 places on the Billboard Hot 100 this week – we are re-presenting some of our stories from Christmas past. This piece, about Jimmy Iovine’s “Pro tips for producing a hit Christmas album,” originally ran in 2019
As Christmas music compilations go, only two have stood the test of time: The first, 1963’s A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector, featured songs performed by the “Wall of Sound” producer’s stable of artists, including The Crystals, The Ronettes and Darlene Love. The second, A Very Special Christmas, is the 1987 collection of holiday tunes executive-produced by Jimmy Iovine before he went on to co-found and run Interscope Records; found with Dr. Dre (and then sell for $3 billion) Beats Electronics; and serve as the architect for Apple Music. The album was an extremely personal endeavor for Iovine — a tribute to his father, Vincent “Jimmy” Iovine, who loved Christmas and died in 1985 at the age of 63. In 2014, Iovine told Billboard that making the project “was the purest thing I’ve ever done.”
Stacked with the most popular artists of the time — many who remain popular and relevant to this day, including Madonna, Whitney Houston, Run-D.M.C., Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Sting, John Mellencamp, Chrissie Hynde and U2 — A Very Special Christmas, an A&M Records release, went on to sell some 4.7 million copies (when its RIAA double-platinum certification and post-1991 Nielsen Music numbers are combined). It also spawned nine more volumes — Iovine was only minimally involved in the second — that have raised over $100 million for the Special Olympics.
Given the initial album’s success — the lion’s share of its tracks continue to be holiday season staples on radio and streaming — Billboard Pro asked Iovine for his do’s and don’ts of producing a hit Christmas album. In the process, he talked about some of his all-time favorite Christmas songs (see carousel) and why they will always be part of his holiday-music playlists.
Do Use Top Talent “If you don’t want to make disposable Christmas music, don’t start with disposable artists. You’ve got to work with artists that are going to last,” says Iovine. “When I play Christmas music, I play Spector’s album, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Dean Martin, Nat “King” Cole — the people that will be around forever.”
Don’t Do It for the Money “I made that album from my stomach and my heart. I didn’t give a shit what we did with the money. I just knew we were going to give it away. And no one — not A&M, not a publisher, none of the artists, not me — made a dime from that record. That’s why $100 million has gone to the Special Olympics.”
Do Be Original “If you are doing a Christmas album, you’ve got to come at it in a unique way. If you are going to take on Phil Spector producing Darlene Love singing “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” you’ve got to go with a male [singer], because you can’t touch it otherwise.” Hence, U2’s exuberant cover on A Very Special Christmas, which captures the longing of the original without copying it, thanks to Bono’s soaring vocals. Iovine says the song was recorded backstage in Scotland before one of the band’s shows “in a giant room with real echo — ‘our version’” of Spector’s famed Wall of Sound.
Don’t Fear the Corny “Some parts of Christmas are corny — and that’s cool. Over the top is good at Christmastime.”
Do an Album — Even If It’s a Compilation “A Very Special Christmas had a feeling behind it and an idea. There was supposed to be joy and a tug at your heart at the same time. It wasn’t made like, ‘Here’s 10 Christmas songs.’ It was made like one artist’s album.”
Don’t Underestimate the Importance of Sequencing “Today no one sequences anything, but when I was making albums, sequencing was almost as important as the songs. A Very Special Christmas is put together like that. The sequencing took forever. I pictured myself at dinner or at a Christmas party, and I would just play a song and ask myself, “Am I bored?” That’s why I opened the album with The Pointer Sisters. They came in and just killed ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.’ And then I went from there. What song comes next is very, very important. What makes a great DJ is he or she gets bored before you do and knows what to play next. That’s what’s missing in a lot of streaming today.”
Since the business of Christmas music is growing so fast – it occupies five of the top 10 places on the Billboard Hot 100 this week – we are re-presenting some of our stories from Christmas past. This piece, the touring success of Trans-Siberian Orchestra, originally ran in 2019. Since then, TSO’s touring success has continued. In 2019, the group’s 109-date tour sold 1,016,000 tickets for a $66.8 million gross. In 2021, it sold 767,000 tickets to 98 shows for $54.6 million. And, this year, as of the end of November, TSO sold 223,000 tickets to 27 shows for $15.6 million.
To date, TSO has grossed $683.2 million and sold 13.5 million tickets.
The Mid-America Center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, which is located in an industrial park down the street from the Cresline Plastic Pipe Company, looks from the outside like any other 8,000-capacity arena. Next week, the Council Bluffs Kennel Dog Show will take place there, followed by a charity bubble-soccer face-off between firefighters and cops from the state and neighboring Nebraska. But every year for three weeks or so in late October and early November, Trans-Siberian Orchestra management turns the venue into a high-tech assembly line and launch pad for the act’s perennial tour.
In one room, storage buckets hold portions of the stage; in a larger space stocked with forklifts and work benches, carpenters weld those portions together. A large mixing board sits inexplicably in one of the arena’s bathrooms, and in separate rehearsal suites, two iterations of the 18-piece orchestra — one that will play dates east of this central U.S. location and one that will head west — go over, and over, this year’s set.
In the main arena space, two rehearsal stages are set end to end. On a Thursday night, one stage sits dormant while the East group runs through its nearly two-and-a-half-hour set, complete with dozens of fiery explosions, webs of crisscrossing green and red lasers, floating video screens, dueling long-haired metal guitarists and elaborate classical and progressive-rock songs engineered from, among many other things, Beethoven riffs, Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” and “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” At one point, a 24-foot metallic contraption on the side of the stage spews out tiny lightning bolts timed to lead guitarist Joel Hoekstra’s solos. It is the show’s latest upgrade: a double-Tesla coil. “Well,” says Al Pitrelli, 57, the tour’s musical director and lead guitarist for the West group, as he stands near the soundboard. “That doesn’t suck.”
For years, the two orchestras played slightly different arrangements of the same songs — the deviations so fine that they were apparent only to the musicians — but that proved unnecessarily complicated for such a large undertaking, especially for the backup drummer who had to learn both versions. Now, both follow the same script and sheet music, more or less. “Each band has a different personality,” says longtime drummer Jeff Plate. “So there are some spots that have a different vibe.”
Trans-Siberian-Orchestra
Jason McEachern
Not that there’s any kind of East-West rivarly. About 85 percent of the crew worked on the previous TSO tour, as have most of the musicians. “We have an expanded family out here,” says Plate of the group that has gathered in Council Bluffs — not surprising for a group that has spent years celebrating the Christmas holidays on the road. Although most of the cast, crew and musicians return home when the tour breaks briefly for Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, on work days they bond over meals catered by topline servers, many customized according to family holiday traditions. For good measure, Pitrelli years ago taught the catering department’s head chef the recipe for his grandmother’s “Sunday sauce.” The musicians spend hours after every evening concert — there are usually two performances a day — greeting fans. “I wouldn’t know what to do without it, honestly,” says Joel Hoekstra, who has toured with the orchestra for 10 years and also plays with Cher and Whitesnake.
The tour — which is slated to hit 66 cities in seven weeks for a total of 109 shows — kicked off on Wednesday. The West orchestra plays its first show in Council Bluffs, while the East contingent debuts in Green Bay, Wis., ushering in the 20th year of an unlikely live-music concept that, despite such a compact itinerary, consistently ranks among the top live outings of the year. According to Billboard Boxscore data, to date, TSO has grossed $546.1 million and sold 11.5 million tickets over 1,484 shows. It is one of only 32 acts in the history of the database to gross more than $500 million as a solo headliner — the orchestras do not co-headline with other acts or even use openers — and one of only 15 solo headliners to sell in excess of 10 million tickets. And for an act that is not a radio staple — even during the holidays — TSO has charted nine albums on the Billboard 200, four of them reaching the top 10; sold 10.1 million albums and 4.9 million downloads; and generated 273.5 million on-demand audio and 177.5 million on-demand video streams, according to Nielsen Music.
Green Bay Press Gazette reviewer Kendra Meinert describes the East orchestra’s opening night as “a little like a family reunion” making a “warm and welcome return.” Noting that the concertgoers in her row included “two teens, a Harley rider and senior citizens talking about their bus trip to Branson, Missouri,” she writes: “That’s how you get to be a top-grossing touring act year after year by touring only for a few weeks.” A loyal fanbase is also a big part of TSO’s perennial success: Management says that 60 percent of this year’s ticket-holders are repeat customers.
In April 2017, Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s extended family was rocked — and the future of the family business suddenly put in doubt — when the orchestra’s founder Paul O’Neill, a driving, dreaming perfectionist who had once played guitar in a touring production of Jesus Christ Superstar and later worked as a promoter and a manager for AC/DC and Def Leppard, died unexpectedly at the age of 61 from a reaction to prescription medicine he was taking. O’Neill’s family made the decision that the show would go on, and when the touring company hit the road again that November, it quickly dispelled any doubts that Trans-SIberian Orchestra had lost its luster without its creator and chief cheerleader at the helm. In 2017 and 2018, TSO went on to score the two biggest Boxscore grosses of its history: $50.2 million and $56.7 million, respectively. (The latter figure also reflects, in part, the highest ticket prices of the act’s history.) The orchestra also finished at No. 20 on Billboard‘s Money Makers ranking of the top-earning acts of 2018, with $18.5 million in collective sales, streaming, publishing and touring income.
Based on ticketing trends for the act, Billboard estimates that TSO’s 2019 box office could approach $60 million this year, thanks, in part, to the decision to revisit in its entirety the orchestra’s debut album, Christmas Eve and Other Stories — and that continued success has the organization already thinking how to top itself next year.
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In the early ‘90s, O’Neill began to plot a holiday-themed live spectacle that combined progressive rock, heavy metal and classical music with elaborate stage productions. He had been producing a struggling Tarpon Springs, Fla., metal and prog rock band called Savatage when its label, Atlantic Records, encouraged him to pursue his idea of a holiday-themed rock opera with a Pink Floyd-style light show. The Queens, N.Y., native mined Savatage for talent, including Pitrelli, who has played with Alice Cooper, Blue Oyster Cult and Megadeth and auditioned after O’Neill rejected what the axman calls “great guitar players all over the planet.” O’Neill asked Pitrelli to play excerpts from Mozart’s Symphony No. 24, and when the guitarist transposed the complex piece into a different key on the spot, he hired him.
Together, O’Neill, Pitrelli and Savatage composer Jon Oliva — who remains a constant presence at TSO rehearsals, clapping and snapping from a chair beneath the stage and bantering with the musicians about key changes and fantasy football — worked out arrangements for original compositions like “Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24.” The instrumental became the heart of Christmas Eve and Other Stories, which told the story of an angel who responds to a father’s prayer to see his daughter for the first time in years. Released in 1996, the album eventually went triple-platinum.
In 1999, O’Neill took his vision on the road, and in 2004, Trans-Siberian Orchestra became the 19th highest-grossing tour of the year, according to Boxscore. It would finish among the top 25 for eight of the next 14 years.
Success did not satisfy O’Neill. “Paul wanted more and more and more,” Plate says of TSO’s shaggy-haired, bearded founder, who wore a leather jacket and sunglasses pretty much everywhere. “He would be almost unrealistic and so adamant.” O’Neill pushed everybody, from musicians to pyro wizards, and during rehearsals could be found “running around the floor” like a rock ‘n’ roll Bob Fosse, Plate adds, “stopping the song in the middle because somebody’s not in the right spot or the singer didn’t have the right inflection on a certain word or the lighting cue was off.” Although he died more than two years ago, managers and musicians still speak of O’Neill in the present tense.
O’Neill’s brand of ambition did not come cheap then — and doesn’t now. Although touring and production director Elliot Saltzman declines to reveal the cost of putting two touring companies — consisting of 120 people and 20 trucks each — on the road (a practice O’Neill initiated in 2000 to meet demand for bookings), he does allow that he budgets $1 million for pyrotechnics alone. (“It’s like being in Iwo Jima [onstage],” Pitrelli says. “But it works.”) “Our startup costs are more than The Rolling Stones — and we have to recoup in seven weeks,” Saltzman says of the double-tour, which runs through Dec. 30 this year.
When O’Neill was alive, he would demand more pyro, lasers and special effects for each successive tour, while Saltzman, Adam Lind and Kenny Kaplan, who oversee the band as partners of Castle Management, played the budget scolds. Since his death, the trio has reversed roles. “Now we have to push a little,” Lind says. Ten years ago, Pitrelli might have attended rehearsal and thought, “It’s pretty good.” Now he “looks for stuff to fix.” Adds the guitarist: “He was my big brother. I’m keeping myself on my toes now. In the back of my mind, I hear Paul always pushing me, but I’ve learned to do it myself.”
At one point, walking through the arena, Saltzman, Lind and Kaplan encounter pyro specialist Doug Adams, who promises imminent Cryo-Jet fog-machine functionality. Pitrelli says Adams frequently tells him, “Wait till you see what I designed this year!” and, anticipating being barbecued onstage, thinks to himself, “Oh, kill me.” Adds Saltzman, who also manages Joan Jett and consults with other tours: “We have fire coming out of everything. We’ve got a lot of mad scientists here.” Kaplan, though, says the managers are experienced enough to know when a piece requires just 15 explosions rather than, say, the pyro team’s preferred 30. “They’re just thinking ‘big is big,’ but we’re trying to measure where it’s spent best,” he says.
Trans-Siberian-Orchestra
Jason McEachern
TSO’s first tour in 1999 played seven shows in five cities and drew 12,000 concertgoers. By 2004, its itinerary had expanded to 100 shows — often two a day — that attracted 1 million ticket-holders. (From 2010 through 2012, TSO took its only non-holiday album, 2000’s Beethoven’s Last Night, on the road in the spring and reps say the orchestra is considering similar tours in the future.) The shows are family-friendly and celebrity attendees include Eddie Van Halen, Kid Rock, the New York Mets’ Noah Syndergaard and The Band Perry, who once drove from Nashville to Knoxville to see the show, parents and grandparents in tow.
When the news broke of O’Neill’s death, the organization was stunned. O’Neill’s imagination and drive to innovate had kept TSO evolving for 20 years. “Paul always had a knack for being one step beyond what anybody could envision,” says Hoekstra. “He would whip everybody into a frenzy.”
“He would come into our dressing room and talk about dreams and mystical ideas and fantasies,” recalls Mee Eun Kim, a keyboardist since 2000. “By the time he leaves the room” — there’s the present tense again — “the girls would all whisper to each other: ‘That’s never going to happen.’” But, Mee Eun adds, “After our first arena show, we looked at each other like, ‘Oh my God, he did it.’ From then on, any time he said anything crazy, we said, ‘OK, Paul!’”
With O’Neill gone, the doubts arrived. “There was a moment when I was like, ‘Oh, what’s going to happen?’” says Mee Eun. Plate and Hoekstra called each other to discuss what a future without the Trans-SIberian Orchestra would look like. They did not have to wonder for very long. O’Neill’s wife, Desiree, and his daughter, Ireland — who, as a young girl, used to shadow her father during rehearsals — quickly decided the show would continue. They declined to comment for this story, and while Lind calls the first tour after O’Neill’s death “very difficult,” he adds, “Paul talked long before his passing of TSO outlasting us all.”
For Trans-Siberian Orchestra to remain relevant to future generations, new music will almost certainly have to be composed for coming tours. Conceivably Oliva and Pitrelli, who were there at the beginning, could carry the torch at least part of the way, and Saltzman, Lind and Kaplan say are always thinking ahead — but right now, they have a tour to do. “That kind of decision comes a little later,” says Kaplan. “We get through this one, then we look at how this played out, what we liked about it, how it will change, what we learned along the way.”
The O’Neill family’s decision to revisit Christmas Eve and Other Stories for this year’s tour has ratcheted up the emotional quotient again for the musicians who date back to the early days of TSO. Pitrelli, whose shoulder-length mane is streaked with gray, says he has a hard time “keeping it straight” while playing songs from the album.
There’s another reason performing TSO’s first album and its story of a father praying for the safe return of his child resonates with the guitarist. Pitrelli’s oldest son, Jesse, is a Coast Guard sniper and his youngest, Zach, a nuclear-submarine engineer “somewhere under the Indian Ocean.” “When I recorded these [songs] for Paul back then, I was in a different head,” Pitrelli adds. “Listening to these songs at this point in my life, I’ve become the older character. I can’t help inserting my name into that story: Where are my boys now? I miss them.”
O’Neill used to tell the musicians and crew the music should last not decades but for centuries, and, for their part, they are determined to fulfill that prophecy. “I’m fairly positive he’s watching it, going, ‘You’re doing good, guy, keep going’” Pitrelli says. “He used to tell me every tour: ‘Just get me through January.’ I’m gonna get him through another January.”
Additional reporting by Eric Frankenberg.
Since the business of Christmas music is growing so fast – it occupies five of the top 10 places on the Billboard Hot 100 this week – we are re-presenting some of our stories from Christmas past. This piece, about how two former Billboard staffers produced the holiday hit “Christmas Rappin’” for then-up-and-coming rapper Kurtis Blow, originally ran in 2019. Since then, in 2020, Robert Ford passed away.
One groundbreaking Christmas hit didn’t just make the Billboard charts — it was produced by two former employees. In 1979, J.B. Moore and Robert Ford left the magazine to produce “Christmas Rappin’ ” for an up-and-coming rapper named Kurtis Blow. Released on Mercury Records, the single went gold, and Blow became the first rapper to sign a major-label deal.
At Billboard, Moore was an ad salesman who sometimes wrote music reviews, and Ford was a production manager who also wrote a column about R&B. They both knew that hip-hop represented the future of music — Public Enemy’s Chuck D has cited a 1978 article by Ford as one of the first mentions of the genre in a national publication. Even so, they didn’t get any interest from A&R executives in New York, so they took “Chrismas Rappin’ ” to Chicago-based Mercury Records, where John Stainze, a recent transfer from the label’s U.K. office to its West Coast operations, convinced Mercury that the song would recoup its costs (about $6,000, remembers Moore) in the United Kingdom alone.
“Christmas Rappin’ ” — a song “ ’bout a red-suited dude with a friendly attitude” — wasn’t originally intended to be a Christmas tune. Moore, who wrote the lyrics, decided to give it a holiday theme because labels like songs they can sell every December. “Christmas Rappin’ ” turned out to be one: It peaked at No. 53 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart in 1995 and at No. 35 on Hot Rap Songs in 1999.
“It took Mercury forever to realize how big it was,” says Moore, who with Ford went on to produce Blow’s landmark “The Breaks” and work with the R&B group Full Force. “I’m sitting here staring at my gold record that should be platinum.”
This article originally appeared in the Dec. 21 issue of Billboard.
Since the business of Christmas music is growing so fast – it occupies five of the top 10 places on the Billboard Hot 100 this week – we are re-presenting some of our stories from Christmas past. This piece, about how Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” came to be considered a holiday song, originally ran in 2019. The story of the song is recounted in the recent documentary Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song.
Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” with its ambiguous, imagistic lyrics about sex and spirituality, was once described by Jeff Buckley, perhaps the song’s most famous interpreter, as “the hallelujah of the orgasm.” So how did an a cappella version by Pentatonix get to No. 21 on the Billboard Holiday 100 in 2018 — after peaking on that chart at No. 2 in 2016?
It’s just the latest twist in the ongoing story of what may be the world’s least likely standard, which originally appeared on Cohen’s 1984 album, Various Positions. The song only became iconic two decades ago, after John Cale’s version was used on the Shrek soundtrack and Buckley’s version appeared in a video VH1 made in tribute to Sept. 11 rescue workers. Around that time, it also began to be used in religious services, its Old Testament imagery and chanted one-word chorus offering a solemnity that seemed to fit weddings, funerals and various occasions in between.
Written by Cohen — a Jewish Buddhist — the song was first associated with Christmas in 2010, when Britain’s Got Talent sensation Susan Boyle included it on her 2010 holiday album, The Gift, which hit No. 1 on both the Billboard 200 and on the Official U.K. Albums Chart. In 2015, violinist-singer Lindsey Stirling released a version that reached No. 81 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 21 on the Holiday 100 the following year; that same year, German superstar Helene Fischer included the song on her hit album Weihnachten.
Since 2016, however, the most popular version of “Hallelujah” on streaming services by far has been Pentatonix’s, which has been streamed 346 million times in the United States, according to Nielsen Music. “When people hear it,” the group’s Scott Hoying told Billboard in 2018 about the song’s staying power, “they feel something.”
Alan Light is the author of The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of “Hallelujah.”
This article originally appeared in the Dec. 21 issue of Billboard.
Over the past three years, the music business has become less dependent on the biggest hits, which account for a smaller share of total streams than they once did. Not in December, though. Holiday music is dominated by a relatively small number of big recordings — Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” Bobby Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock,” Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” — and that hasn’t changed since 2019.
So far this season, through Dec. 8, the top 50 holiday songs accounted for 34.3% of all streams from the top 10,000 holiday tracks — the exact same percentage as when Billboard looked at holiday music in Dec. 2019. The share of the top 100, at 46.1%, is just slightly lower than the 46.6% share from 2019 while the shares of the top 250, 500 and 1,000 are all less than one percentage point lower than three years ago.
That’s not surprising. Holiday listening is dominated by a small number of recordings that have become enduring favorites. Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas” has reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 every year since 2019. The order of the next few songs hasn’t changed either: Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock,” Burl Ives’ “Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas,” and Andy Williams’ “It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” Other than “All I Want for Christmas,” all of them were recorded before 1964.
New holiday tracks have a hard time breaking through. At 28 years old, Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas” is an outlier among tracks that are usually 50 years or older. “Last Christmas” by Wham!, currently fifth in on-demand audio streams, is a relatively youthful 36. At Nos. 8 and 12, Ariana Grande’s “Santa Tell Me” and Kelly Clarkson’s “Underneath the Tree” are the babies of the top 10.
Pop music has no use for such tradition, or centrality – especially now that personalization has reduced the number of plays track get from prominent placement on streaming-service playlists. From 2019 to 2022, the share of the top 10,000 on-demand streaming songs devoted to the top 50 went from 10.3% to 5.8%. The share of the top 250 went from 25.5% to 17.5% during that same period, while the share of the top 1000 went from 49.2% to 41.6%.
Christmas is one of the few times – perhaps because most people spend it with friends or family – when we all listen to the same songs.
Since the business of Christmas music is growing so fast – it occupies five of the top ten places on the Billboard Hot 100 this week – we are re-presenting some of our stories from Christmas past. This piece, about the changes in the music business that have made the genre so important, was originally published in 2019.
Five months ago, during the dog days of summer, Sony Music executive Lyn Koppe was already running a 15-person meeting to prepare for Christmas. It wasn’t her first that year, either. Koppe, executive vp global catalog for Sony’s Legacy Recordings, leads a team that every January begins planning how to promote the year’s holiday releases, as well as the company’s evergreen seasonal music. As the sun shone down on Sony’s Manhattan offices, which overlook Madison Square Park, the group tossed around ideas by phone with executives from TikTok and members of Mariah Carey’s management team on how to promote the 25th-anniversary reissue of Carey’s Merry Christmas. Someone from management suggested looping in Carey, whom Koppe says is “very hands-on” about marketing — “the look and feel, timing and strategy.” And, within minutes, the five-octave alto herself had joined the call to chime in on the best way to promote the reissue.
“I think there were a few jaws on the floor,” says Koppe, recalling her TikTok counterparts’ reaction to Carey’s cameo at the meeting. But there was a lot at stake: The singer’s iconic Christmas album has become an annuity for her and Sony, a blue-chip property in a holiday recorded-music business that was worth $177 million in 2018 in the United States alone, estimates Billboard.
Carey understands that even the most enduring albums need promotion. So Koppe’s team of music elves — which included executives from marketing, publicity, A&R and product management — worked with Twitter to create an exclusive video of Carey reading fans’ tweets about her holiday music. They created a video skit to go with an enhanced version of the album for Spotify. And by fall, they were promoting the Last Christmas soundtrack — which includes the Wham! single the movie is named after, as well as other songs by the late George Michael, who was the songwriter of the duo — and working to maintain the visibility of time-honored seasonal hits by Andy Williams, The Ronettes and Elvis Presley. “We make sure they’re not forgotten about,” says Koppe.
This year, at least, there’s little danger of that. For about a century, the business of Christmas music was defined by holiday purchases, which meant that hit recordings were enormously profitable the year they were released but didn’t generate much revenue after a couple of years. Few record stores stocked much older Christmas music, and terrestrial radio doesn’t pay to use recordings in the United States. But because streaming monetizes the ongoing consumption of music rather than an initial purchase, it has changed the concentrated business of Christmas music even more dramatically than the rest of the industry. These changes have also amplified the cumulative advantage of the classic holiday recordings that come up first in search results — whether typed in or voice-requested.
Although it’s hard to get exact figures for the holiday music business, the most popular recordings in the genre generate far more revenue than they did a decade ago. “Last Christmas” by Wham! sold 81,000 tracks in the United States in 2008 — and sold and streamed the equivalent of 706,000 last year, according to Nielsen Music. Older recordings are getting more popular, too: Andy Williams’ “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” the third-most-popular holiday recording of 2018, sold 52,000 tracks in 2008 and streamed and sold the equivalent of 839,000 last year. Overall, holiday music accounted for 0.89% of on-demand streams in 2015 and 1.11% last year — and during that time, the overall revenue from on-demand streaming rose from $1.57 billion in 2015 to $5.5 billion in 2018, according to the RIAA.
Most of this Christmas cash goes to a relatively small number of rights holders. Last year, the top 50 holiday recordings accounted for 35.3% of all holiday streaming, while the top 50 pop tracks accounted for just 12% of streaming in that genre. Half of the top holiday track streams go to the top 252 recordings, while half of pop streams go to the top 613 pop tracks. At the top, the rewards are considerable — the top holiday recording of 2018, Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” was streamed almost a quarter as much as the year’s top pop song. But the No. 100 holiday recording on streaming services was streamed less than 10% as much as the No. 100 pop track.
To get a sense of just how much streaming has changed this part of the business, consider that some of the most popular holiday recordings weren’t easily available on traditional CD albums a decade ago. The second-most-popular holiday song in 2018 was “Jingle Bell Rock” by Bobby Helms, a 1950s country artist who aside from that track sold the equivalent of 1,000 albums, including downloads and streaming. Some holiday hits by famous artists weren’t even available on albums: Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime,” the Eagles’ “Please Come Home for Christmas” and Bruce Springsteen’s live recording of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” were issued as singles, though they’re all available now on compilations.
At a time when streaming is ruled by pop and hip-hop from the past two decades, the list of the top 100 holiday tracks is dominated by the original versions of classic songs, recorded by artists that younger listeners aren’t familiar with: Williams, Helms, Burl Ives (“Have a Holly Jolly Christmas,” the No. 5 most popular holiday recording of 2018) and Gene Autry (“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” No. 9). Helms’ version of “Jingle Bell Rock” is more than 12 times as popular as the second-biggest version, by Hall & Oates. Perhaps it is because holiday music is so associated with tradition, “I don’t know of a rerecording that outperforms the original,” says SiriusXM director of programming Jess Besack.
These songs are like blue-chip stocks: uncool but no less valuable for it. And they’re likely to grow in value, along with streaming revenue in general. “Christmas hits,” says Koppe, “are the gifts that keep on giving.”
Christmas music has been a significant part of the music business for as long as there has been one — and some of the same songs have been popular since the days of wax cylinders. The first known Christmas recording is “Jingle Bells,” cut by the banjo player Will Lyle in 1889. In 1905, Victor Records had a hit with “Silent Night, Hallow’d Night,” an English version of the German hymn “Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht.” Thirty years later, Bing Crosby made the song an even bigger hit, which was included on the 1940 Decca compilation An Album of Christmas Music — the Now That’s What I Call Christmas! of the 78 rpm era.
Over the next few years, Crosby helped make Christmas big business. His 1942 recording of “White Christmas” sold 600,000 copies that year and 2 million in 1943, according to Crosby biographer Gary Giddins, and it is said to have sold over 50 million copies worldwide — making it the biggest single ever. That recording, plus another take on “Silent Night” and other songs, were released as the Crosby album Merry Christmas, a version of which is still in print today.
Rock changed pop culture, but singers like Presley embraced the season, too: The most popular holiday LP in the United States is his Christmas Album, which has been certified 17-times platinum in various versions. It includes a rendition of “White Christmas” that upset songwriter Irving Berlin so much that he asked radio stations not to play it.
As pop music continued to evolve, Christmas repertoire did too. Kurtis Blow’s “Christmas Rappin’,” released by Mercury Records in 1979, was the first rap single to go gold, with sales of 500,000 (see story, below). In 1987, Run-D.M.C. hit No. 78 on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Christmas in Hollis,” which sampled Clarence Carter’s 1968 soul single “Back Door Santa.” Other holiday music sounded less like the songs on the pop charts: Producer Chip Davis’ new age project, Mannheim Steamroller, hit No. 50 on the Billboard 200 in 1984 with Christmas, and it went on to release 38 holiday albums that all together account for 21.6 million album-equivalent units.
Although streaming has boosted the holiday music sector even more than the overall industry, it’s harder than ever to score a Christmas hit that remains popular year after year. It’s one thing for a new tune to sell, or stream, in its initial year of release — but quite another to show up on the chart every year, like Carey does. “Getting a big hit with a new Christmas song is gold when it happens,” says Kevin Gore, president of global catalog at Warner Music Group (WMG). “But it’s not easy.”
Some acts score with new versions of classics: Pentatonix had 19 of last year’s 200 most popular holiday streaming tracks, and Michael Bublé had the second-most-popular versions of “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas” and “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” But the original recordings are usually far more popular, at least partly because streaming algorithms have turned their familiarity into advantageous positioning. “Original recordings, with years of thumbs-up and listens, definitely tend to rise to the top of our Christmas and holiday stations,” says Alex White, vp music programming and curation at Pandora.
That’s an understatement: Since most streaming services tend to recommend songs that are already popular, especially in response to general search queries like “Christmas music,” Billboard’s Holiday 100 chart has less turnover than the Supreme Court.
For hits that break through, though, the payoff can be extraordinary. Last year, Ariana Grande’s original 2014 track “Santa Tell Me” garnered 82.9 million streams, more than any other original holiday song released this decade. The second-most-popular was Justin Bieber’s “Mistletoe,” also an original, with 58.5 million. Because streaming-service algorithms tend to reinforce popularity, a bit of luck and the right promotion could keep them high on the chart for years to come.
Even by the standards of pop music, holiday hits are unpredictable. Among this year’s candidates: Keith Urban’s “I’ll Be Your Santa Tonight,” which debuted on the Dec. 21 Digital Song Sales chart; the Jonas Brothers’ “Like It’s Christmas,” which reached No. 25 on the Holiday 100 when it came out and was streamed 12.7 million times in the first three weeks following its release; and Taylor Swift’s “Christmas Tree Farm,” which debuted on the Dec. 21 Hot 100. All three are upbeat, with the cozy but celebratory feel of holiday classics. “The Jonas Brothers song captures the good feel of a modern Christmas classic,” says Jeff Moskow, head of U.S. A&R for the Now That’s What I Call Music series, who slotted it after Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” on Now’s Christmas playlist on Spotify.
Even if a song doesn’t outlast December’s snowmen, it could still help the artist that recorded it. Holiday releases are an easy way to keep performers visible at the end of the year, which can only help merchandise sales. “It’s an always-on music business,” says Jay Gilbert, co-founder of Label Logic, a company that provides marketing services for labels and managers. “You need to keep your audience engaged.” And the popularity of Christmas movies means that holiday music often scores lucrative synch placements.
Sometimes, new Christmas songs that debut without much fanfare maintain their popularity surprisingly well. Grande’s “Santa Tell Me” peaked at No. 42 on the Hot 100 when it arrived in 2014 and improved to No. 33 in 2018. Similarly, Kelly Clarkson’s “Underneath the Tree” peaked at No. 78 when it was released in 2013 and rose to No. 44 last year. “I don’t know why some songs stick and some don’t,” says Moskow.
As in the rest of the music business, popularity depends significantly on playlist placement — for both new and old material. Consider “Driving Home for Christmas” by British musician Chris Rea, an original song he wrote that hit No. 11 on the U.K. singles chart in 1988. It took over a decade for it to become a Christmas staple in the United Kingdom, and it’s now on Spotify’s Christmas Hits playlist — even though Rea hasn’t had a song on a U.S. chart since 1990, and most listeners are probably unfamiliar with him. “A song like Chris Rea’s ‘Driving Home for Christmas’ is experiencing a lot more discovery than it would have in a different era,” says WMG’s Gore.
No one wants to leave discovery to chance though, even for established classics. So executives who don’t have stars like Carey to work with are getting creative. Warner made a video for a new recording of “White Christmas” by Bublé, and Universal Music Group’s UMe catalog division hired studios to make animated clips for nine of its classic holiday recordings, including Dean Martin’s “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” and The Jackson 5’s “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.”
“We recognized that there’s an opportunity to develop and extend engagement with our holiday catalog to an underserved audience that primarily accesses music through YouTube,” says UMe president/CEO Bruce Resnikoff. So far, the 1.4 million YouTube views that Frank Sinatra’s “Jingle Bells” racked up in the three weeks between Nov. 4 and Nov. 25 represent a 220% increase over the same period last year.
To younger YouTube users, some of these songs may sound as quaint as the animation looks. But Christmas music has always been driven by collective nostalgia — listeners want a version of “White Christmas” just like the one they used to hear. “If a customer requests a holiday song simply by song title, they likely expect and enjoy the classic recorded version as a return,” says Karen Pettyjohn, senior music curator at Amazon Music.
The more customers enjoy those results, of course, the more likely streaming algorithms are to keep offering them. Which means that songs like Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” could remain popular as long as Christmas itself.
This article originally appeared in the Dec. 21 issue of Billboard.
Since the business of Christmas music is growing so fast – it occupies five of the top 10 places on the Billboard Hot 100 this week – we are re-presenting some of our stories from Christmas past. This piece, about the role streaming playlists play in this growing sector, originally ran last year
If you search “Christmas 2021” on Spotify, the top result will be a massive playlist—124 tracks and six hours long—that opens with Queen’s “Thank God It’s Christmas,” then dips into a range of old and new holiday songs from Bing Crosby, Katy Perry, Ella Fitzgerald, Kacey Musgraves and others before landing on “I Want You Home (#heimnachten),” a track from last year by European relative unknowns Bowie & Pyrah. It’s not user-generated. Rather, it’s carefully curated by Universal Music Group, using “data, insight, analytics,” according to Mike Biggane, UMG’s executive vp music strategy and tactics.
“Our hope is somebody’s going to discover our playlists by the holidays, put it on and just let it go,” he says. “They won’t have the urge to change.”
The holiday-music streaming season, which unofficially begins the day after Halloween, is big business for labels. Last year, Universal’s more than 500 holiday playlists, created by 200 curators in 67 countries, generated over 120 million streams from Nov. 1 to Dec. 21, according to Biggane. In the CD era, some 20 years ago, labels’ fourth-quarter strategies centered on turning superstar releases into stocking stuffers. Now that streaming accounts for 83% of industry revenue, as of 2020, however, holiday-music clicks are a bigger focus of fourth-quarter plans. Holiday music generated $177 million for the U.S. music industry in 2018, Billboard estimates.
Vinnie Freda, a former Warner and Universal digital music executive, isn’t surprised by UMG’s six-hour playlist since holiday music is often a lean back and listen experience. “People put that stuff on repeat,” he says, adding that it’s a win when listener can essentially set it and forget it, that’s a win. “Generally, Christmas music is fungible: ‘If I can get you to listen to this thing for the next six hours, that means you’re not listening to Sony Music.’”
Because the holiday-music streaming numbers are so massive, labels now have year-round project teams and staff to promote catalog evergreens, from the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s A Charlie Brown Christmas to Bing Crosby’s Christmas Classics to Phil Spector’s A Christmas Gift to You. They also encourage contemporary stars to record new holiday albums, like Dolly Parton’s A Holly Dolly Christmas last year or Kelly Clarkson’s recent When Christmas Comes Around, whose “Christmas Isn’t Canceled (Just You)” went viral and generated 1.5 million Spotify plays and 1.2 million YouTube views by early December.
Ariana Grande performs “Last Christmas” and “Santa Tell Me” during the taping of the Disney Parks “Frozen Christmas Celebration” TV Special in the Magic Kingdom Park at the Walt Disney World Resort on Dec. 9, 2014 in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.
Mark Ashman/Disney Parks via GI
Even if a recent recording gets lost amid the annual avalanche of holiday content, its use in a Christmas movie or TV special could promote streaming for years to come. Amazon Music has noticed recent streaming spikes for Faith Hill’s “Where Are You Christmas,” from the 2000 soundtrack to the Jim Carrey movie Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas, as well as Ariana Grande’s 2014 single “Santa Tell Me.” “Holiday music can grow,” says Karen Pettyjohn, Amazon Music’s senior music curator. While new releases are expected to deliver instant hits, “that same expectation doesn’t apply here, because it’s about nostalgia and memory.”
In the few days before Christmas 2020, Alexa requests for festive songs on playlists like Merry Mix totaled more than 15 million per day. “People use it to soundtrack things, like a party or gingerbread-house making,” says Pettyjohn. “It’s long listening and it’s lean-back listening.” Adds Universal’s Biggane: “Voice is a major driver of streams for us, and our artists understand what a huge opportunity holiday music is for them.”
Craft Recordings, the catalog label owned by Concord Recorded Music, doesn’t have to do much to market its biggest holiday release, the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s classic A Charlie Brown Christmas. According to Concord’s vp streaming Andrew Woloz, however, label reps try to ensure Guaraldi (and Craft’s other holiday songs), wind up on important streaming playlists. Sometimes that’s as simple as a label-generated playlist, like Jazz Christmas. It can also be a matter of finding the right playlist title to activate in response to a keyword in a common Alexa request. “People tend to search what they want to hear thematically. They drink hot chocolate, they sit by the fire, they’re wearing sweaters,” says Woloz. “You hone in on those words and build in those schematics.
“Holiday is such an evergreen genre, so catalog will take up so much of the real estate,” he adds. “New songs, even if they don’t hit an algorithm this year, maybe they’ll hit a wave in years to come. Artists have to keep feeding the content machine.”
Labels tend the content machine as well. Concord’s Craft, for example, pitches holiday music to music-streaming products like workout giant Peloton, which has a roster of holiday-themed classes and a new Holiday Collection playlist; Sony studies voice-activated streaming requests, looking at how to combine music with popular Alexa games or place strategic Amazon Music advertisements. And every label focuses on pitching holiday songs to top playlists, from Spotify’s Christmas Classics, which has 2.3 million likes, or Amazon Music’s Merry Mix, which hit the streaming service’s list of the top 10 playlists after launching in November.
Sony Music’s holiday-music project team is 10-15 employees, drawn from the company’s content, A&R, marketing and international departments. Unlike the project teams that focus on Valentine’s Day and Halloween, the holiday-music team works year-round, with one exception. “They have January off,” says Lyn Koppe, executive vp global catalog for the label’s catalog division, Legacy Recordings. “It’s not like on Halloween, suddenly we say, ‘We better start thinking about Christmas!’ We think about Christmas all year. We gather data and learn from it and experiment.”
Read more about the Booming Business of Christmas Music here.
What better way to celebrate being No. 1 by setting an enormous table for one? Mariah Carey had a lot to be excited about this week thanks to her perennial holiday classic, “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” climbing back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart. The song logged its ninth total week atop the Hot 100, becoming the first song to lead in four distinct runs on the tally.
“YAYYYYYYY!!!!,” the singer wrote followed by 12 party hat emoji in a post in which she sat at the end of a very long dining room table with her hands in the air in triumph. “Such an amazing surprise and an early Christmas gift!!!,” she added along with a string of more celebratory emoji (heart, Christmas tree, snowflake, present, purple heart, and, of course, butterfly). “Thank you so much!!!”
Carey said she could not wait to see her Lambily for the first of two shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night (Dec. 13).
“All I Want” was first released on Carey’s 1994 Merry Christmas album and as streaming has grown and holiday music has become more prominent on streaming services’ playlists, it hit the Hot 100’s top 10 for the first time in December 2017 and the top five for the first time in the 2018 holiday season. It went on to rule the holiday charts in 2019 (for three weeks), 2020 (two) and 2021 (three).
The song is not just a single chart smash, it’s all over the top spots. It also hit No. 1 on the official U.K. Singles Chart this week, and it is ruling both the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Exlu. U.S. charts.
See Carey’s tweet below.
YAYYYYYYY!!!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉 Such an amazing surprise and an early Christmas gift!!! ❤️🎄❄️🎁💜🦋 Thank you so much!!!🥹🥹 Can’t wait to see you tomorrow (today) at MSG and celebrate together!!!! ❤️❤️❤️ https://t.co/PaTPWsjpiB pic.twitter.com/87BvSqA8T8— Mariah Carey (@MariahCarey) December 13, 2022
Welcome to The Contenders, a midweek column that looks at artists aiming for the top of the Billboard charts, and the strategies behind their efforts. This week (for the upcoming Billboard 200 albums chart dated Dec. 10): Tis the season for holiday albums to invade the top of the charts, but albums from Taylor Swift, Drake and 21 Savage, and Bad Bunny could push back the tree-lighting for a week.
Michael Bublé, Christmas (143/Reprise): It’s beginning to look a lot like Michael Bublé season on the Billboard 200 once again. The 21st century crooner peaks his head into the chart’s top tier this week with his 2011 Christmas set, which climbs 19-10 on the listing dated Dec. 3, and should continue its ascent in the weeks to come.
Christmas, featuring Bublé’s velvety versions of holiday standards like “Jingle Bells,” “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” and “White Christmas” (the latter a duet with Shania Twain), is no stranger to the top of the Billboard 200: The album spent five weeks at No. 1 across 2011 and 2012, and finished No. 2 on the Year-End Billboard 200 for 2012, behind Adele’s 21. Last holiday season, Adele was once again the Grinch who stole the Christmas No. 1, as Bublé’s album rose to No. 2 on the Billboard 200 dated Jan. 1, 2022, after her 30.
This year Bublé will face a different challenger: Taylor Swift’s Midnights, which has reigned on the Billboard 200 for four of the past five weeks, posting equivalent album units in the six digits each frame. Time will tell if the Christmas spirit is strong enough to prevail. (Last holiday season, Christmas‘ biggest one-week unit sum was 77,000.)
Mariah Carey, Merry Christmas (Columbia): No artist of the last 30 years is as synonymous with the holiday season as Mariah Carey. However, while Carey’s Billboard Hot 100 dominance has become an annual event – her perennial “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has bested the chart each of the last three holiday seasons, ruling for a combined eight weeks – she has yet to top the Billboard 200 with that single’s parent album.
Merry Christmas climbed as high as No. 3 when it came out in 1994 – Kenny G’s less enduring seasonal set Miracles: The Holiday Album ruled the Dec. 17 chart – but has yet to return to a higher perch than No. 4, which it reached on the chart dated Jan. 4, 2020. (The album’s sequel, Merry Christmas II You, also reached No. 4 upon its Nov. 2010 release.) This week, Merry Christmas jumps 40-19 — still behind Bublé, but you can never count out the Queen of Christmas.
Vince Guaraldi Trio, A Charlie Brown Christmas Soundtrack (Fantasy): It’s not all seasonal pop standards on the Billboard 200: The sentimental pull of jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi’s 1965 soundtrack to the classic A Charlie Brown Christmas special spans generations, and makes the set an annual chart contender in the streaming era. The album hit the Billboard 200’s top 10 for the first time two holiday seasons ago, on the chart dated Jan. 2, 2021, then reached a new peak of No. 6 on the Jan. 1 chart this year. Now it’s once again on the rise, climbing from No. 43 to No. 17 on this week’s chart.
IN THE MIX
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Live at the Fillmore 1997 (Warner): This new 58-track live set from Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, which spans the group’s 20-night residency at the storied San Francisco venue a quarter-century ago and is available in 2-CD and 3-LP regular editions, 4-CD and 6-LP deluxe editions, plus a limited edition 6xLP Uber Deluxe — should also make a sizeable debut.
Quando Rondo and YoungBoy Never Broke Again, 3860 (Quando Rondo, LLC/Never Broke Again/Atlantic): It’s been five whole weeks since we last covered YoungBoy Never Broke Again in The Contenders, but before the holidays get into full swing, he’s got one more set to sneak into his already project-strewn 2022. This time, it’s a collaborative mixtape with fellow southern rapper Quando Rondo, who is signed to YoungBoy’s label (called Never Broke Again), and takes center stage on the release, with solo showcases on five of its 16 tracks.
Brockhampton, TM (Question Everything/RCA): Brockhampton pulled double duty last week with a pair of farewell releases, The Family and TM. The former set debuted at No. 15 on the most recent Billboard 200 (dated Dec. 3), but the latter was nowhere to be found – a state of affairs that should change this week, as sales of signed CDs available on the band’s website will likely boost the set’s totals to charting levels.
