Every year musicians of various genres feel called to record Christmas carols or even entire Christmas albums.

The all-time favorites “Last Christmas” from Wham!

(published 1984) and Mariah Carey's “All I Want For Christmas Is You” (1994) are joined by the prominent duo Elton John and Ed Sheeran this year.

Abba also conveniently put a Christmas song on their comeback album with “Little Things”, and Carey is even competing with himself with “Fall In Love At Christmas”.

Benjamin Fischer

Editor in business.

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Christmas publications can be a very worthwhile business - regardless of whether it's your own creations or cover versions of various classics.

The range of albums is also mixed accordingly this year.

For Schlager fans, for example, there was Roland Kaiser's “Christmas Time” - the gift box with two CDs plus a cookie stamp, tree ball and other fan articles cost 54.99 euros - or the album by Howard Carpendale.

Upswing through Spotify & Co

Cookie cutters or a signed card are included for 42.99 euros. Carpendale also calls five buyers. While trumpeter Till Brönner held back with additions to the sound carrier, the punk band Broilers also presented a package with mulled wine for their Christmas album. Like other artists, the Düsseldorfers sell tree balls separately.

Of course, there are always re-releases with Christmas hits on CD or vinyl, often designed in a particularly elaborate manner (and correspondingly high-priced). Usually these are albums - this year a new version of Michael Bublé's box office hit “Christmas”. Singles are the absolute exception. The fact that the original versions of “Last Christmas” and “All I Want For Christmas Is You” are now reliably at the top of the single charts is primarily due to streaming, which has been used in Germany since January 1, 2014 for the calculation of the official ranking will.

In direct comparison to the one-time record sales, Spotify and Co bring much lower, but regular income for the rights holders of music.

Over time a lot comes together - one of the main reasons for the sustained rush of investors for catalogs with tried and tested songs.

The Christmas super hits are a prime example.

Ridgeley misses out on “Last Christmas”

In the case of “All I Want For Christmas Is You”, in addition to Mariah Carey, the Hipgnosis fund can now look forward to the Christmas season.

Because he has held Walter Afanasieffs part of the rights to the text and compositions of the song since November 2020 and is thus also involved in the success of the countless cover versions - Afanasieffs is Mariah Carey's co-songwriter at the time.

“Last Christmas” was released in 1984 as a Wham! Song, but George Michael's partner Andrew Ridgeley was not involved in the creation of the lyrics, the composition of the music and ultimately the recording.

So he gets nothing - in contrast to the heirs of the artist who died on Christmas Day in 2016.

Just last week, the estate administrators extended their collaboration with the Warner Music publisher.

Incidentally, Sony Music benefits twice: both songs were originally released on labels of the second largest music company in the world.