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Music

21st Dec 2019

Mariah Carey is still making a killing from ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’

Alan Loughnane

Mariah Carey

It’s one of the great Christmas songs.

Mariah Carey first premiered ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ in 1994 and since then, it’s been in the charts every time Christmas rolls around.

Despite being 25 years old, it has continued its Christmas dominance this year by leaping up the charts in countries around the world.

It’s been lucrative as well, with the song netting Carey more than $60 million in royalties according to a 2016 estimate from The Economist.

But she still gets a yearly sum of €470,000, according to a 2015 study from Channel 5.

These were the top earning Christmas songs in 2015 according to their research.

  1. “Merry Xmas Everybody” by Slade £1m (in royalties per year)
  2. “Fairytale of New York” by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl £400,000
  3. “All I Want for Christmas is You” by Mariah Carey £400,000
  4. “White Christmas” by Bing Crosby £328,000
  5. “Last Christmas” by Wham! £300,000
  6. “Wonderful Christmastime” by Paul McCartney £260,000
  7.  “Stop the Cavalry” by Jona Lewie £120,000
  8. “2000 Miles” by The Pretenders £102,000
  9. “Mistletoe and Wine” by Cliff Richard £100,000
  10. “Stay Another Day” by East 17 £97,000

Carey’s song has already earned more than $2 million in royalties since the song was first added to Spotify, according to a study by Broadband Deals.

The song also broke Spotify’s global single-day streaming record on December 24, 2018, surpassing 10.8 million streams.

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