The group Pentatonix are known for their a capella renditions of Christmas classics. They used to start touring after Thanksgiving, but this year they kicked off on Nov. 8.
“We’re like, ‘well, we don’t know if somebody in Utah is going to want to purchase a ticket for a Christmas concert on Nov. 8, but let’s try it,’” said Sara Baczewski, who co-manages the group. Even starting so early, the 26-date arena tour has been going “super well,” she continued. “The world is really looking for this.”
Listeners are embracing Christmas music earlier than ever —and playing more of it. On Dec. 1, 2019, 14 holiday songs were in the top 50 on Spotify in the U.S. This Dec. 1, the tally was already at 30.
By Dec. 10, 20 of the top 25 tracks were Christmas-themed. The only non-holiday songs able to withstand the deluge are juggernauts like “The Fate of Ophelia” by Taylor Swift and “Golden” from the hit Netflix movie “KPop Demon Hunters.”
Matt Bailey, founder of the music analytics company Hit Momentum, suggested that during periods of stress, listeners are more likely to return to 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,” Bailey said. He pointed out that Christmas streaming spiked early during the pandemic in 2020 as well.
The ubiquity of holiday songs also represents a rare monocultural music moment—even though listeners are spread across multiple streaming services and social-media platforms, many of them are mainlining the same tunes. For Talia Kraines, an editorial lead at Spotify whose purview includes North American Christmas playlists, holiday music serves to “make people feel part of a collective and make them feel good.”
The usual suspects led the holiday charge on this year’s chart: Mariah Carey’s stampeding anthem “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” Brenda Lee’s country-tinged confection “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” and Wham!’s wistful gem “Last Christmas.” A handful of tracks from the 2010s are sprinkled among the older stalwarts like salt on an icy sidewalk—Ariana Grande’s “Santa Tell Me,” Justin Bieber’s “Mistletoe,” and Kelly Clarkson’s “Underneath the Tree.”
Diehard holiday fans cue up these songs well before Nov. 1. “You would be amazed at how many people are listening to Christmas music in the summer,” Kraines said.
Spotify observes “the first big jump” in holiday-song streaming on Sept. 1, she noted. Activity ticks up again the next month; holiday playlist creation in the U.S. rose 60% from October 2024 to October 2025. Come November, for many listeners, it’s “all Christmas music all the time.”
Artists get into the spirit: Christmas songs “are fun to write and low pressure,” said the music manager Jonathan Daniel. His clients include Sia, Train and Fall Out Boy, who have all released holiday albums or singles. “People don’t judge Christmas music the way they judge other releases, especially for the big pop stars,” Daniel added.
Around Christmas, listeners are also more open to a wide range of sounds. A capella music is not usually commercially successful, but Pentatonix has sold more than 9 million holiday albums in the U.S.
The singer Laufey has had streaming success with songs that nod to bossa nova and 1950s vocal jazz; her version of “Winter Wonderland,” released in 2023, is earning more than 1.3 million plays a day on Spotify. “Laufey has often said Christmas is when the whole world listens to jazz,” said Max Gredinger, who manages the singer. “How could she not be a part of that?” Each year, Laufey adds a song or two to her Christmas album.
Even some artist estates, while unable to write or record new Christmas tracks, find creative ways to get in on the holiday action.
Bing Crosby, a Christmas titan, racks up 70% of his annual streams in December, according to Adam Lowenberg, chief marketing officer at Primary Wave Music, a music-publishing company that also markets prominent artists’ catalogs. The crooner’s estate partnered with Primary Wave to reach new listeners, which led to a fresh version of Crosby’s “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” in October with vocals from the country star Lainey Wilson. That followed a similar effort last year when V from the K-pop group BTS hopped on Crosby’s song “White Christmas.”
It’s not easy to break into the holiday canon with a new track. But artists are incentivized to try anyway. Daniel described a holiday hit as a “little ATM machine.”
Sia scored with her 2017 album “Everyday Is Christmas,” which is earning close to 8 million streams a day. She wrote every song on the release, and “Snowman”—“Don’t cry, snowman, don’t you shed a tear/Who’ll hear my secrets if you don’t have ears?”—has become a particular favorite, with more than 1.3 billion plays on Spotify alone since its release.
Another one of Daniel’s clients is the rock band Weezer, who released a six-song holiday collection in 2008. These days, he said, “they’re thinking about doing another Christmas album.”
Write to Elias Leight at elias.leight@wsj.com
