Holiday music is already drawing millions of daily Spotify streams
Spotify reports 36.2 million daily holiday-song streams before October, with September listening and playlist creation already rising.
Spotify says festive songs were averaging 36.2 million streams a day on its service by October 1. Listeners also created more than 100,000 holiday playlists in September. These are Spotify-reported activity figures, not totals for the wider streaming market.
At the time of the announcement, Bleachers’ “Merry Christmas, Please Don’t Call” led Spotify’s 2026 holiday-themed tracks, followed by Alex Crichton’s “Merry Christmas, i miss you,” Sia’s “Snowman,” Wham!’s “Last Christmas” and Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” This early-season ordering can change before December.
Spotify draws a useful distinction between a current-year snapshot and long-term catalog performance. It calls Carey’s recording its most-streamed holiday song overall and Michael Bublé its most popular holiday artist overall. According to Spotify, every one of the five leading U.S. holiday tracks last December was more than 30 years old.
Seasonal listening also starts at different times. Spotify says listening begins to rise around October 1 in Barbados, compared with a global average of October 30. Holiday music made up 1.3% of streams in the Philippines in September, more than twice the share of the next-highest market, Colombia.
The early figures show how seasonal catalog music can return to circulation before the holiday chart period. They do not predict which recording will top December charts: Spotify’s data covers its own listeners, while each published chart uses its own measurement rules.