Christmas is coming earlier and earlier for music streamers
Mariah Carey and co. are cashing in on “christmas creep.”
There’s always debate about when Christmas festivities should begin, with the fatigue-conscious putting off partaking until at least December 1, while others hardly wait for the Halloween decor to come down before decking the halls.
Still, like it or lump it, you’ll probably hear some of the most instantly recognisable xylophone tinkles in music history even earlier this year.
I-I-I... get streamed a lot for Christmas
It seems that Mariah Carey is already defrosted for 2025: her classic hit “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has officially reentered the Billboard Hot 100 after accruing almost 10 million streams (up 252% week over week) from October 31 to November 6, per Luminate.
This marks one of the earliest points that the song, which is estimated to gross up to $4 million each year, has ever charted in the US, only achieving this milestone at the very end of November in 2023.
It’s not just Mariah, however — Spotify data, compiled by Kworb, shows that users are generally listening to the wider Yuletide genre earlier each year, and in greater quantities.
Last year, “AIWFCIY” had its biggest week on Spotify in history, accruing nearly 93 million streams from December 19 through 26 — and more than 323 million across the whole festive season, after first breaking into Spotify’s Top 200 songs on the week of November 7. “Last Christmas” by Wham! notched 314 million total streams over the same nine weeks on Spotify last year, and has also already reentered the Billboard chart in 2025.
Compare this to 2013, when both of these songs entered the Top 200 just three weeks before Christmas, and it’s clear that the music-on-demand era brought about by streaming has been good news for merry megahits. Indeed, four other popular Christmas songs have similarly seen the weeks they spend on the Spotify chart expand over the past decade.
Yuletidal drift
With the collective streams across all six efforts growing about 22x in all, the trend patently has something to do with streaming’s swelling user base. But the “christmas creep” observed in previous years might now be coming earlier as many seek comfort at the end of a tumultuous 2025.
Unlike coniferous trees that can only sit in your living room for a finite time, Christmas music can be played again and again (as retail workers will attest). And, when festive tunes can be listened to on a convenient playlist, rather than be physically dug out of a CD rack or vinyl collection, the guilt of playing them in November seems to be fading fast — music to the ears of streaming giants like Spotify, which released its Holiday Collection a month earlier this year than in previous seasons.
