Culture
'Tis the season: Christmas songs are climbing the charts

'Tis the season: Christmas songs are climbing the charts

David Crowther

Step into Christmas

‍We have to inform you that there are not only people who will start listening to Christmas music today, but that there are many people who have been listening to Christmas music for weeks.

Yes, it’s beginning to look a little like Christmas: the season of cheer, retail (see above), understanding, chestnuts on open fires, and your favorite festive stars coming out of hibernation (e.g. Bublé). Few can resist getting into the holiday spirit in the lead-up to December 25th, and nothing captures the magic like a holly-jolly hit — in fact, 53% of Americans consider Xmas music to be “essential” in any celebrations.

‍Joy to the world

‍According to a 2017 Spotify study, November 12th marked the threshold when Xmas songs comprised over 2% of all streams. From then on, the festive listening ramps up each weekend, before peaking on the big day itself… and then sharply dropping when the holiday has wrapped up.

Predictably, the song climbing the Spotify charts the fastest is Christmas-constant All I Want for Christmas Is You by Mariah Carey, which was already the 11th most listened-to song on all of Spotify (globally) on Wednesday, racking up 3.3 million streams on that day alone — worth about $8-10k of royalties to the rights holders, per estimates.

‍Related data: Cool visual from Eva Murray exploring when Christmas music takes over in different countries.

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Saleah Blancaflor

Justin Bieber’s music keeps surging on streaming after Coachella

You better belieb it. After Justin Bieber headlined the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in Indio, California, Billboard reports the pop star is experiencing the biggest non-Super Bowl catalog bump this year, with his music tripling in streams just days after his first set on April 11.

Following Bieber’s performance on Weekend 2 at Coachella on April 18 (which included appearances from Billie Eilish and SZA), his streams climbed even higher.

On Monday (April 20), Bieber’s streams reached a new high for the year, amassing 32.4 million official on-demand US streams, according to Luminate, which is a 12% increase from his total the previous Monday (just over 29 million) and a 5% gain from the previous Tuesday (30.9 million), his previous high-water mark for 2026.

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(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

Since the Coachella bump, he’s had a total of six days with at least 30 million streams, compared with only four days in all of 2025, when he released his “Swag” album.

Spotify reported that following Bieber’s first Coachella set, the pop star reached No. 1 on Spotify’s Global Top Artist chart, with his catalog surpassing 77 million streams in a single day, which marked his biggest streaming day of the year.

While prediction markets currently show that Bruno Mars is in the lead at 74% for the artist with the most monthly Spotify listeners at the end of April, Bieber could slowly catch up with a week left in the month. The “Baby” singer is currently in second place, with his odds at 27%.

Justin Bieber’s Post-Coachella Streams Aren’t Done Spiking Yet

Justin Bieber’s Post-Coachella Streams Aren’t Done Spiking Yet

On Monday (April 20), Bieber’s streams reached a new high for the year, amassing 32.4 million official on-demand US streams, according to Luminate, which is a 12% increase from his total the previous Monday (just over 29 million) and a 5% gain from the previous Tuesday (30.9 million), his previous high-water mark for 2026.

Loading...
 

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

Since the Coachella bump, he’s had a total of six days with at least 30 million streams, compared with only four days in all of 2025, when he released his “Swag” album.

Spotify reported that following Bieber’s first Coachella set, the pop star reached No. 1 on Spotify’s Global Top Artist chart, with his catalog surpassing 77 million streams in a single day, which marked his biggest streaming day of the year.

While prediction markets currently show that Bruno Mars is in the lead at 74% for the artist with the most monthly Spotify listeners at the end of April, Bieber could slowly catch up with a week left in the month. The “Baby” singer is currently in second place, with his odds at 27%.

culture
Max Knoblauch

Xbox cuts price of its Game Pass subscription by 23%, removes new “Call of Duty” games

A Halley’s Comet-level event in the world of subscriptions is occurring at Microsoft: the company announced it will lower the price of its Game Pass Ultimate from $29.99 to $22.99.

The move comes a little over a week after reports revealed an internal memo from new Xbox head Asha Sharma in which the exec told employees that Game Pass has “become too expensive.” Back in October, before Sharma’s tenure began, Xbox hiked its Game Pass subscription by 50%.

With the price drop, Game Pass will also see a major shift: new “Call of Duty” titles will no longer be added to the service at launch, instead joining the library about a year later during the following holiday season. The subscription will still cost a bit more than it did before the popular titles were added in 2024.

According to estimates reported by Bloomberg, the decision to put “Call of Duty” on Game Pass cost Xbox more than $300 million.

Millie Giles
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College applications fall if weather is bad during tours, study suggests

New research finds the vibes on the day that prospective students visit a college might affect whether they apply.

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Tom Jones
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LIV Golf’s Saudi backers are reportedly pulling out after pumping $5 billion into the tour

The 2026 season will continue “uninterrupted and at full throttle,” LIV’s CEO said.

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Millie Giles

The most popular male and female names in the US, according to the latest Census

New data published Tuesday by the US Census Bureau has revealed the most common names provided in the 2020 Census, in the first release to include forename data since 1990.

As described in the brief, Michael was the most popular name for males in the US, with roughly 3.5 million American men reporting having this name or a close variant. This is up from fourth place in the 1990 Census, when the top US male name was James — though there were still 3 million Jameses in 2020’s tally.

Despite a three-decade gap, Mary remained the top name for American females in both censuses, with the 2020 survey counting almost 1.8 million females with this given name. Interestingly, Mary was one of just two predominantly female names that broke the top 10 given names in the US, with the overall list dominated mostly by male monikers.

Most popular names US census 2020 chart
Sherwood News

In all, American females had far more first-name diversity than male counterparts: 16% of US males had one of the top 10 most frequent names among men, compared with 7.8% of women. Zooming out, almost 3x as many given names were needed to cover a quarter of the US female population than that of males.

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