Several studies attempt to quantify the annual earnings generated by the artist for his Christmas song. Everyone agrees that the American company collects several million dollars in royalties each year.
“It’s tiiiiiiiiime.” Every year, it's impossible to escape it. There are those who voluntarily listen to it every day until December 25. Others, whatever they do to avoid it, hear it on the radio, at parties and in all the shops and Christmas markets. For 30 years, Mariah Carey nous chante “All I Want for Christmas is You” for the holidays. And this earns him big.
The song was written and produced in 1994 by Mariah Carey and Walter Afanasieff. At the time, the world star had not yet explored this very particular genre of Christmas songs. Upon its release, the title received a good reception from the public, but nothing more. The album sold 5 million copies in the world the first yearand becomes multi-sinker in the United States, with more than 3 million copies sold.
But it is mainly the following years, thanks to reissues, streaming but above all its revival in the British film Love Actuallythat the song is become a commercial juggernautfar surpassing its initial impact.
How much money does Mariah Carey make at Christmas?
Several studies have tried to quantify the earnings that the title brings to Mariah Carey. According to Billboard estimates, taken up by the magazine Forbes“All I Want for Christmas Is You” a généré in 2021 approximately $6.16 million in revenue recording and editing in 2021, based on 94,000 downloads and 823 million streams. Which means the artist probably pocketed around $1.55 million that yearto which is added $830,000 in publishing revenue share*, since Carey is co-author of the piece.
And that's only for the year 2021. According to a study carried out in 2016 by The Economistthe American diva recovers on average $2.5 million in royalties each year for this piece.
Named “best Christmas song of all time”
It's (almost) not that surprising. The title breaks records every year. Already, he is officially the “best Christmas song of all time” based on commercial performance by Billboard in 2023.
At the same time, the song has three Guinness World Records in 2019, including that of most listened to song on Spotify in 24 hours by a female artist – more than 10.8 million times in one day from December 2018. In 2022, it broke this record again with 21.3 million streams.
For her part, Mariah Carey, who won 5 Grammy Awards, is one of the best-selling female artists of all time, with more than 200 million albums sold during his career. She places herself tenth in the Spotify world rankingswith approximately 73.4 million monthly listeners.
*based on a 50% percentage of initial song writing.
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