Name: Home for the holidays: Timeless tunes drive festive music revenue
Uploaded: 2025-12-25T08:58:33.573Z
Duration: 4 min 3 s
Description: Familiar tunes are making a merry comeback. CNBC’s Dan Murphy and JP Ong explore the seasonal resurgence of Christmas music on the charts.

Familiar tunes are making a merry comeback. CNBC’s Dan Murphy and JP Ong explore the seasonal resurgence of Christmas music on the charts.

Classic Christmas songs remain highly lucrative for their creators, with tracks like Bing Crosby's "White Christmas," Wham!'s "Last Christmas," and Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" generating millions in royalties each year. The streaming era has further boosted the accessibility and global reach of these festive tunes, ensuring their continued dominance during the holiday season.

Artists such as Mariah Carey, who holds both songwriting and publishing rights, have benefited substantially, with her hit song reportedly earning up to $10 million annually and an estimated $80-100 million over its lifetime. Other enduring classics, including Chris Rea's "Driving Home for Christmas" and the Jackson 5's "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," also return to popularity each year, uniting listeners worldwide.

Home for the holidays: Timeless tunes drive festive music revenue

Here's a look at who's making big Christmas cash. Starting with the original juggernaut Bing Crosby's White Christmas was recorded during World War Two and became a morale anthem for U.S. troops. And more than 80 years later it is still generating royalties. Let's call him the original Christmas crooner and the grandfather of evergreen intellectual property. Yeah. And slave belling in at number two. You know the song. It's Wham's last Christmas. The song was released in 1984. It didn't actually reach number one in the U.K. until 2021. So that was a weight of 37 years. But it was written produced and performed almost entirely by George Michael meaning highly concentrated royalty ownership. That's a good thing. And this song also generates an estimated two to three million pounds a year. It also consistently ranks as the second most streamed Christmas song globally. Which brings us to number one. And yep you guessed it. Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas Is You is the most streamed Christmas song of all time. It may have taken 25 years to hit number one but it is now a full blown seasonal revenue generating asset. The song that generates an estimated I think it's eight to 10 million dollars a year in global royalties effectively behaving like a blue chip dividend stock. I guess you could say. And over its lifetime it's generated an estimated 80 to 100 million dollars for Mariah who has both the songwriting credit and the publishing rights which is not bad for a four minute song. The reports say took about 15 minutes to write JP. And we also want to give an honorable mention to the late Chris rare who passed away on Monday. His driving home for Christmas song was never a number one hit but it returns every year and remains an enduring classic. So a lot of things are really parts through with regards to this holiday season. Again a lot of these things really dominating the airways and really coloring what might be the December flurry of songs right there. Then I guess the big question is really which one might be your favorite. I think we hear the same songs every single year. But what's interesting for these artists is that the streaming era has really reinvigorated a lot of this music because you know as we just reported you saw a lot of the songs that were written you know in some cases up to 80 years ago and now receiving airtime because there's so much more readily available. That means more royalties for the artists who wrote the songs and of course more enjoyment I guess for people who actually take part and celebrate in Christmas festivities. This is the backdrop the soundtrack to what is a really beautiful time of year for lots of people as well. And again these could be the Christmas carols of the future. Actually as we know Silent Night was also one of those songs that was sung a long time ago translated multiple languages. And guess what. It's still a fixture of many Christmas carols. In fact that brings me to this point. And actually wasn't there a Hugh Grant movie where the central character actually lived off the royalties of a Christmas carol. Yeah that was written by his father or something. Yeah exactly. Exactly. I remember. And you know what I think it's so interesting as well because when you look at the impact of this music worldwide it is quite enduring. And of course one thing that also unites people over Christmas is these songs because they're truly global. Right. We spoke about how we see songs trending in the United States songs trending in the UK. There's not necessarily a bridge or a gap that stops these songs from being listened worldwide. And I think that's also a really beautiful aspect to this. So I know what an honorable mention also the Jackson 5. I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus might be another thing that's actually worth looking at. You get you're getting a bit of a glimpse in my character character list when I get back to Manila for the holidays. But yeah definitely a very festive time. And then we could spend a lot of time talking about songs that are sang over this festive season. But more important things to talk about right now because while we're getting to the end of the year still a lot of parts with regards to the market. Absolutely. Absolutely. And whether or not we're seeing a Santa Claus rally taking place as well. So let's not. There you go. Maybe that's the next hit. Let's see.

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