Do people listen less to the hits during the holidays?

As Americans have embraced non-stop sleigh bells from Thanksgiving to Christmas, It's hard to find any other new music during the holidays. Is it time for artists to change that?

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Renowned radio consultant and music guru Sean Ross recently lamented that there just aren’t any new hits at Christmastime anymore. In “Santa, Please Bring Back the Hits for Christmas,” Ross blames the 21^st century rise of the all-Christmas radio format—and interest in general in non-stop Santa from Thanksgiving to Christmas—for the demise of any non-holiday new music debuting in December.

There’s plenty of evidence that holiday music is huge. That station in your town that ditches its “variety the whole office can agree on” for six weeks of non-stop Jingle Bells is probably the #1 station during December. Other radio stations simply give up trying to compete.

Spotify usage also confirms just how much Americans love Christmas music. In the week after Thanksgiving, 25% of streams of the top 200 songs are already plays of holiday songs. By Christmas week, almost half of all streams are holiday-related.

Also by Christmas week, 75 of the 200 most-streamed songs on Spotify for the week are Christmas songs.

Since music consumption seems so dominated by sleighs and Santa nowadays, neither record labels nor radio stations invest any real effort to release or promote new songs during December. Turn on the radio on December 26 and you’ll likely hear the exact same songs you heard before Thanksgiving.

You won’t find much new music on Spotify in December either, compared to every other month.

It wasn’t always this way. December was once a common time for some of the biggest releases of the year.

But wait a minute…

Do people who like Taylor Swift, Jack Harlow, or Mitski from January through November suddenly listen instead to “Last Christmas” and roasting chestnuts all December? 

Or…

Do contemporary music fans keep listening to their favorite music styles throughout December, while also finding time to enjoy holiday favorites?

Is it also possible that some of those folks who binge Bing Crosby’s kind of ho’s simply aren’t the same people who are into Cardi B’s kind of ho’s?

To answer both questions, let’s go deeper into Spotify data during November 2023 through January 2024 to see how consumption of the biggest non-holiday hits changes during the height of the holiday season. Statistically, this task isn’t straight-forward:

• We can’t simply look at the percentage of Christmas songs in the top 200 because the number of total plays for all 200 songs can change from week to week.

• We also can’t simply examine the total plays of non-holiday songs since all those holiday songs are pushing other songs out of the top 200. It wouldn’t include the same number of songs from week to week.

Instead, let’s start by examining the 10 biggest songs on Spotify in the United States during the week before Thanksgiving (the week of November 16th, 2023):

Then, let’s track how many times folks play those songs on Spotify each week during the holiday season (which we will denote as the weeks of November 30th, 2023 through December 28th, 2023) and then after the holiday season in January 2024. 

• If we see a massive dip in streams for the biggest non-holiday hits each week that corresponds to streaming of holiday titles, we can conclude that music fans really do lose interest in hit music during Christmastime.

• If, however, we see that people keep right on listening to the non-holiday hits at levels we’d expect during the rest of the year, we can conclude that Christmas music creates its own demand. If that’s true, then December is theoretically just as good a time as any for an artist to release new material.

Here’s what happens to those songs that were the top 10 most streamed songs on Spotify in the U.S. on the week before Thanksgiving, broken out into streaming plays per week through January ‘24:

#1: Taylor Swift - Is It Over Now? (Taylor's Version) (From The Vault)

A typical example of a song that diehard fans play incessantly play upon release, but that doesn’t become a hit among a wider audience, “Is It Over Now” retained less than 25% of its weekly plays ten weeks after it’s debut week. Expected streams for the song were down 11% Christmas week, but were exactly as expected during the rest of the season.

#2: Jack Harlow - Lovin On Me

In contrast, “Lovin On Me” is the kind of mass-appeal hit radio loves, reflected in how it retains its Spotify streaming levels week after week as more casual fans discover it. It’s also the song that appears to get fewer plays during December than any of the other top 10 songs we’re examining.

#3: Mitski - My Love Mine All Mine

This Gen-Z favorite drops 15% of its plays Christmas week compared to the week before Christmas. However, the song’s slow recovery in January suggests that drop isn’t entirely related to yuletide listening.

#4: Zach Bryan, Kacey Musgraves - I Remember Everything

Unlike other songs, this Country title drops 14% during the three weeks leading up to Christmas. The song’s drop in streaming plays during Thanksgiving may also be holiday related. Either way, this song—along with Jack Harlow’s latest hit—sees the greatest decline in plays during December among the songs we’re analyzing.

#5: Noah Kahan - Stick Season

Another favorite artist of Gen-Z, Noah Kahan’s ode to a different season is also difficult to gauge: If we simply examine the song’s streaming levels from December 7^th through January 4^th, “Stick Season” appears to drop 12% during the three weeks leading up to Christmas. However, the song had comparable streaming in November before Thanksgiving.

#6: Doja Cat - Agora Hills

Streaming plays were 10% lower than expected Christmas week, but unaffected during the rest of December.

#7: Taylor Swift - Now That We Don't Talk (Taylor's Version) (From The Vault)

Following a comparable pattern to “Is It Over Now” (#1 above), this song also saw 12% fewer plays than expected Christmas week, but shows no unexpected drops during other holiday weeks.

#8: Drake, Yeat - IDGAF

At first glance, it might look like fans give slightly fewer F’s for IDGAF Christmas week. Examine the overall trend for this title, however, and any drop during Christmas is well within the week-to-week fluctuation in streams for this song.

#9: Tate McRae – greedy

Christmas week streaming is 12% lower compared to the week before Christmas and in the four subsequent weeks in January.

#10: Taylor Swift - Cruel Summer

If we simply compare streaming during the three weeks leading up to Christmas with the first week of December, plays of “Cruel Summer” dip 14% during those holiday weeks. However, that first December week’s play count is oddly high compared to every week in November. Is it possible “Cruel Summer” didn’t actually decline during the holidays, but instead became re-energized in the new year?

Hopefully, you’re seeing that there is no clear-cut decline in consumption of non-holiday hits during the Christmas season that impacts all songs equally.

• Some songs, such as “I Remember Everything,” seem to have a clearly defined—albeit small—drop in consumption during the three weeks leading up to Christmas.

• Songs like Doja Cat’s “Agora Hills” decline slightly Christmas week, but are unaffected during other December weeks.

• Still other songs, such as Drake and Yeat’s “IDGAF,” appear completely unaffected by the holiday season.

If you must draw a conclusion from how these top 10 hits hold up on Spotify during the holidays, streaming plays for non-holiday hits decline 12% on average during the week of Christmas, but hardly decline at all during the rest of December.

What about the bigger picture?

As noted, we can’t simply examine the total number of streams of all non-holiday songs, since that number changes every week depending on how many holiday songs are among the top 200. However, we can look at a subset of the 125 biggest non-holiday hits. (Since there are at most 75 Holiday titles in the top 200, there are at least 125 non-holiday titles during every week of the holiday season.)

That data shows that consumption is down only 7% for non-holiday songs Christmas week and is actually down 8% during New Year’s week. Was Christmas week streaming of non-holiday hits down because of Christmas music, or simply because fans had less time during the holidays to spend on Spotify?

Besides, that slight decline in streaming for non-holiday songs is minuscule compared to the massive streaming of holiday hits.

So what can we conclude?

People who like Christmas music create new listening occasions to enjoy it. If a listener is a big fan of certain hit songs, they keep right on listening to those hits and spend additional time with Spotify to hear holiday favorites. Other listeners may not have spent much time playing contemporary songs on Spotify at all, but use the service heavily during the holidays.

So, is December a disastrous time to debut a new song?

Among the few songs that dropped during the holidays, Nicki Minaj’s FTCU (That’s “F*** This Club Up” if you’re not texting) debuted on Spotify the week of December 14^th. For the week of January 4^th, when all those Holiday songs were gone from Spotify’s Top 200, “FTCU” was #7 among the most streamed songs that week.

It was the only top 10 song on Spotify during the first week of January that hadn’t already been a top 10 hit before Thanksgiving. That’s unusual for Spotify’s most streamed songs, which usually favor new releases that an artist’s fans binge-play as soon as they drop.

The biggest factor impeding “FTCU” is because the record label didn’t even encourage radio stations to add “FTCU” until January 30^th. 

Let’s summarize what we’ve learned:

1. People still want to hear regular music during the holidays: Interest in non-holiday music might dip by 7% to 12% (depending on which measure you trust) during the week of Christmas. By and large, however, consumption of the biggest non-holiday hits remains largely unaffected by the surge of Christmas music consumption.

2. Some hits see no negative impact at all during December: It’s hard to draw conclusions with only a few examples, but songs that are more mass-appeal or that appeal to an older audience may be more susceptible to a minor decline in plays during December, while songs that have appeal to younger listeners might see no decline at all.

3. December is still a perfectly reasonable time to debut new music: We only have one example of a potentially big hit debuting in December 2023 and that song wouldn’t receive significant radio exposure until the end of January 2024. Based on that one song’s Spotify plays, however, fans seem perfectly willing to sample new music from their favorite artists during the holidays.

I lack the influence with Graphs About Songs to make record labels and radio stations recommit to releasing and promoting their latest hits in December as they used to do. If nothing else, I hope to validate that Sean Ross isn’t alone in wanting December new music releases to come back.

Meanwhile, I already got my Christmas wish…

For the first year ever, Brenda Lee—who turned 79 in December 2023—beat out Mariah Carey in total streams during November and December 2023, based on Spotify’s top 200 most played songs in the U.S.

Let’s crown the real Queen of Christmas.

Source for today’s post:

• Spotify Top 200 Weekly Charts in the U.S.A. https://charts.spotify.com

• Sean Ross’ Ross on Radio column “Santa, Please Bring Back The Hits for Christmas”: https://radioinsight.com/blogs/262879/santa-please-bring-back-the-hits-for-christmas/