America's Top Christmas Songs For 2022 Are...

Are America’s all-Christmas radio stations playing the right songs? P1 Media Group’s annual Christmas Music Research is here. P1 Media Group, a global leader in media research and strategy, surveyed radio listeners nationwide likely to listen to an all-Christmas music radio station during the holiday season. We tested the appeal of the 40 most-played and 40 most-streamed Christmas songs from the 2021 Holiday Season, a total of 60 unique songs, according to Luminate’s holiday charts.

Key Findings

“Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” by Brenda Lee is America’s #1 Christmas song, edging “Jingle Bell Rock” by Bobby Helms for the first time in five years by a fraction of a percentage point. 

“Christmas music’s appeal remains as strong as ever amongst American radio listeners who listen to All Christmas stations ‘frequently’ or ‘sometimes’ and personally enjoy Christmas music on a local radio station during the holiday season,” says Ken Benson, Partner, and co-founder, of P1 Media Group. 

“As we often see, there is a lot to learn when we compare radio airplay to on-demand streaming data, even with holiday music. Understanding streaming data can help broaden the appeal of your station.”

• The Holiday Classics rule the Top 20, including “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” “Jingle Bell Rock,” and two versions of “Holly Jolly Christmas,” “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “It’s Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas,” and “Sleigh Ride.”
• 2021’s #1 Stream and Airplay song ”Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” from 1994 is the newest song in the Top 20 and is the 6th highest testing Christmas song this year.

➤This list includes the 19 Christmas songs from the Top 40 most-streamed that didn’t make the Top 40 most-played airplay chart. The research suggests that these 19 songs should be considered for airplay.

➤There are ten new entries for 2022:

                #32 Frank Sinatra – Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow
      #34 Darlene Love – Winter Wonderland
      #35 Bruce Springsteen – Santa Claus is Coming to Town
      #40 Michael Bublé – It’s Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas
       #42 Taylor Swift – Last Christmas
       #53 John Legend– What Christmas Means to Me
       #55  N Sync – Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday
       #56 Sia – Snowman
       #57 Jonas Brothers – Like it’s Christmas
       #60 Gwen Stefani – You Make it Feel Like Christmas

●       Kelly Clarkson’s “Underneath the Tree” from 2010, and Ariana Grande’s “Santa Tell Me,” 2014, and are the two highest-testing original Christmas songs from the Millennium, ranking #41 and #44, respectively.

●       53 of the 60 Christmas songs tested very favorably with an appeal score of 70 or higher on a 100-point scale. The remaining 7 songs also have positive results testing 65 or higher.

27% say Christmas Music should begin in early November.

• 24% Beginning of December
• 21% Thanksgiving
• 21% mid-November
• 9% mid-December
• 70% of Women want Christmas music to begin sometime in November versus on 57% of Men

The most surprising finding in the study is that 48% say Christmas music programming should stop on New Year’s Eve.

• 24% on December 26th
• 16% Christmas Day
• 7% December 27th
• 6% some other time

About the Survey

P1 Media Group conducted the online survey the weekend of October 28-30, 2022. We sampled 400 18-54-year-old radio listeners from the Top 50 American Radio Markets. Participants were required to listen either “Frequently” or “Sometimes” to an all-Christmas Music local radio station during the holiday season and rate their personal enjoyment of Christmas music on a local radio station during the holiday season a ‘7’ or higher on a 1 to 10 scale. We identified “Heavy Streamers” by asking each respondent “How frequently you listen to music on your smartphone, computer or other listening device from a streaming service such as Pandora, Spotify or Apple Music.” 50% of the sample responded they stream “everyday” and 25% answered a “few days” a week. 75% of the total sample were designated as “Heavy Streamers.”

The test list was compiled from the most-played Christmas Songs on American radio in 2021 and the most-streamed Christmas songs in America in 2021, according to Luminate. The full results are available http://p1mediagroup.com