Mariah's favourite month: It's December, Christmas songs are officially playable... and Mariah is still #1

12/3/20 7:00PM

Spotify is doing its annual Wrapped series, exploring each users listening habits and telling them, for the most part, that they aren't as cool as they thought they were.

If Spotify did Wrapped a month later, there's a decent chance Mariah Carey would make her way into a lot of people's top artists. We explored the latest data from Spotify to see which classic Christmas hits are already making their way into the charts. Who is on top? Who else, but queen of Christmas music Mariah Carey.

Her song "All I Want for Christmas Is You" has been ruling the Christmas hit list pretty much every year since it came out in 1994. This year it crept into Spotify's global top 200 chart on November 1st, and has risen steadily ever since, now up to #3 on the global chart — routinely racking up 4m+ streams per day.

According to Spotify's data, the other Christmas mega-hits are "Last Christmas" by Wham!, "Santa Tell Me" by Ariana Grande and Michael Buble's "It's Beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas".

‍Future proof

‍A truly successful Christmas album, or single, is a great way for an artist to future proof themselves. One Christmas hit can provide an income for artists long after they stop producing or releasing new music (used to great effect as a plot device in the film About a Boy).

A ballpark figure for how much each stream is worth is around $0.004. So 4 million streams per day is a cool $16,000 in Mariah's pockets (and whoever she has to split it with) everyday. And it's only December 4th.

Hyunsoo Rim

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JetBlue is raising its bag fees as fuel costs squeeze airlines

JetBlue will reportedly hike its bag fees, as the cost of jet fuel continues to climb amid the war in Iran. It’s the latest example of carriers finding ways to push rising costs onto travelers.

Last week, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said that if fuel prices remain elevated, fares would need to rise another 20% for his airline to break even this year.

As CNBC reported, when one airline raises fees, others tend to follow.

Earlier this month, JetBlue hiked its first-quarter outlook for operating revenue per seat mile to between 5% and 7%, saying that strong Q1 demand helped “partially offset additional expenses realized from operational disruptions and rising fuel costs.” Now, the carrier appears to be making moves to further boost revenue to offset those costs.

Earlier on Monday, JetBlue rival Alaska Air lowered its Q1 profit forecast. The refining margins for the carrier’s cheapest fuel option — sourced from Singapore and representing about 20% of Alaska’s overall supply — have spiked 400% since February.

JetBlue did not immediately respond to a request for comment.