Photo Credit: Tessa Rampersad
Christmas music is charting earlier each year—just after the summer ends, according to Spotify. But Scrooges might be surprised to learn it’s not strictly due to commercialism.
By the second week of December, 20 of the top 25 tracks on Spotify are Christmas-themed. Only heavy-hitters like Taylor Swift’s “The Fate of Ophelia” or “Golden” from the Netflix film KPop Demon Hunters are able to withstand the hype. But if you’ve been feeling like Christmas music seems to start playing a little earlier each year, you’re not imagining it.
Between the nostalgia associated with the holiday season, the varied genres in the music—and, undeniably, increasing pressure from the commercialism of it all to go bigger and better each year—listeners are likely to return to perceived familiar comforts.
“The traditions of the holiday season, especially the music, provide us an emotional anchor as we face rising costs, a shaky job market, political strife at home and war abroad,” said Matt Bailey, founder of the music analytics company Hit Momentum. He added that during the pandemic in 2020, Christmas streaming spiked particularly early.
But Christmas music also allows a unique opportunity to explore genres in which an artist might not normally dabble, or to which a listener doesn’t normally gravitate. Music manager Jonathan Daniel, whose clients include Sia, Fall Out Boy, and Train—all of whom have released holiday albums or singles—pointed out that Christmas songs “are fun to write and low pressure” for artists.
“People don’t judge Christmas music the way they judge other releases, especially for the big pop stars,” said Daniel.
During the holidays, listeners are more open to a wider variety of genres and sounds. For example, a capella music isn’t usually a commercial heavyweight, but the a capella group Pentatonix has sold more than 9 million holiday albums in the U.S. alone.
Spotify reports that “the first big jump” in holiday track streaming actually begins on September 1, around the time the summer is ending and kids are going back to school. “You would be amazed at how many people are listening to Christmas music in the summer,” said Talia Kraines, editorial lead at Spotify.
The second major leap in activity comes in October, and Kraines points out that holiday playlist creation in the U.S. rose 60% from October 2024 to October 2025. Then it’s “all Christmas music all the time” once November starts.
Of course, the usual suspects lead the holiday charge this year, much like years past: Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You,” Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” and Wham!’s “Last Christmas,” as well as more contemporary tracks like Kelly Clarkson’s “Underneath the Tree,” Justin Bieber’s “Mistletoe,” and Ariana Grande’s “Santa Tell Me.”
While artists find it fun and easy to experiment with holiday music, it can also be daunting to break onto the scene with a new Christmas song. But artists are incentivized to take a crack at it—Daniel describes a holiday hit as “a little ATM.”
For example, Sia’s 2017 album, Everyday is Christmas, is clocking around 8 million streams a day; the track “Snowman” from the release has over 1.3 billion Spotify plays alone. And Daniel reports that even rock band Weezer, who released a holiday EP back in 2008, are “thinking about doing another Christmas album.”
