It's Hard for New Christmas Songs to Compete with Legendary Works

JAKARTA - In the United States, the Christmas music industry is not just a cultural celebration, but a giant business that can generate more than 177 million US dollars per year.

However, behind these tempting numbers, there is very tight and concentrated competition.

According to data from Luminate, Christmas music royalties tend to be concentrated on a handful of legendary hit songs.

For comparison, in 2023, the top 50 Christmas songs accounted for 35 percent of all holiday song streams.

The figure is much higher than the pop genre, where the top 50 songs only account for 12 percent of total streaming.

This phenomenon shows that in Christmas music, the choice is only two: to become as popular as Michael Bublé or Mariah Carey, or to sink into thousands of other songs.

Guy Moot as CEO of Warner Chappell Music said that writing a new hit Christmas song is a very difficult mission. People tend to look for nostalgia during the holiday season, so old songs still dominate.

"Writing a new contemporary Christmas hit is one of the hardest things, it's like finding the holy grail," Moot said, quoting the Billboard YouTube channel, Friday, December 19.

"People want nostalgia. You grow up with those songs, play them for your kids, and that's the symbol of Christmas for them," he added.

Nevertheless, the potential for stable long-term royalties makes writing Christmas songs still attractive for musicians.

In fact, the industry doesn't stop trying. Warner Chappell even recently held a songwriting camp (songwriting camp) involving 50 songwriters to create a new Christmas compilation album.

This move is not just to chase chart positions, but to target synchronization opportunities in advertising and film campaigns whose demand always surges at the end of the year.