"Merry Christmas Everyone" How much will stars earn from Christmas hits in 2024?

Christmas songs are a reliable source of income for many artists. Some hits bring their creators large sums of money every year - and some have been doing so for 50 years.

Christmas is not only a time for giving, but also for earning - at least for pop stars, whose hits keep the cash registers ringing year after year in December.

Artists benefit from the royalties from their old hits, which also provide them with a secure income in 2024. Income comes from Christmas compilations, streaming services, physical sales, advertising, films and TV - and even cover versions.

Song as pension insurance

As music professor George Howard from Berklee College of Music tells the British "Standard", the old contemplative hits are always more lucrative than those that come onto the market every year: "It's no longer about releasing new Christmas songs, but about recycling them again and again. The more people cover these songs, the more the songwriters profit."

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In other words, the most profitable Christmas song these days is a bit outdated: It's "Merry Christmas Everyone" from 1973, written by the then singer of the band Slade, Noddy Holder. In 2013, the hit earned him around 560,000 francs a year, today the figure is over a million a year. As "Standard" writes, the 78-year-old author of the song described it as his pension insurance.

Here are the ten Christmas songs that make the creators' tills ring every year.

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