Burnaby’s Michael Bublé could earn as much as US$6.3 million in royalties this holiday season from just two of his songs, according to a recent analysis.
That would be the second largest payout after Mariah Carey, whose holiday mega hit, “All I Want for Christmas is You,” is projected to earn $7.3 million in royalties, according to an analysis of Spotify data by Jackpot City, an online casino operator.
“It’s no surprise that Michael Bublé has made a Christmas comeback this year, having two of his Christmas songs reach the top-10-most-played on Spotify,” said Lucas Costa, market development manager for Jackpot City.
With nearly 32 million streams in the first three weeks of November, Bublé’s hits “Holly Jolly Christmas” and “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” were expected to be streamed nearly 1.6 billion times globally by the end of December.
That still falls short of the 1.8 billion streams expected for Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You.”
Jackpot City tracked the number of plays for each popular Christmas song over the first three weeks of November on Spotify. By analyzing the cumulative increase in streams for each song, analysts were able to estimate the number of streams each song could get by Christmas Day and how much this could make each artist in royalty payments.
Songs by Carey, Wham!, Brenda Lee, and Bobby Helms are the top four holiday favourites. They’re expected to see the largest rise in overall plays by Christmas, according to Jackpot City.
“Last Christmas” by Wham! is predicted to earn more than $5.9 million in royalty payments from more than 1.47 million plays, while “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” by Lee could earn as much as $5.4 million over the holiday season.
While lucrative, cracking the top 10 holiday playlist can be tough. Most songs in the top 10 are from artists with decades-long careers or who are deceased.
There are some exceptions. Kelly Clarkson’s “Underneath the Tree” was released in 2013 and is expected to be the fifth most-played holiday song this season, earning an estimated $3.7 million. And “Snowman,” by Australian artist Sia, which was released in 2018, is expected to rank eighth, earning an estimated $3.5 million.
Despite only releasing her Christmas song in 2023, Sabrina Carpenter looks set to earn more this year with “Nonsense Christmas” than Bing Crosby’s 1941 classic “White Christmas.” Carpenter is expected to break the top 20 and could earn $1.8 million from “Nonsense Christmas” this season.
“After her mega hits this year, Sabrina Carpenter might also dominate the festive season, with plays of her song ‘Nonsense Christmas’ predicted to reach into the top 20 after only being released last year. It’ll be interesting to see how the rest of the Christmas period plays out for our favourite yuletide artists,” Costa said.
Holiday songs started streaming early this year, according to the analysis.
“Spotify users have proven that it’s never too early to listen to Christmas songs this year, with listeners opting for festive favourites from the start of November,” Costa said.
Royalty estimates were generated assuming that Spotify pays the right holders of songs between $0.003 and $0.005 on average per stream, usually divided between the artist, the label and the publisher.
