The Music Industry Wants to Make Halloween the New Christmas

Halloween-themed music is surging in popularity, quickly becoming a tentpole for the industry looking for surefire seasons to launch new singles, albums, and playlists.

Why It Hits: Considering the insane popularity of Christmas music for two months of the year, Halloween could precede it as the antithesis of the cheery genre — allowing artists with a darker or macabre style to have a moment to shine while culture is embracing a similar vibe.

Behind The Songs: Everyone’s turning up the volume on spooky season.

• Bobby Pickett’s 1962 single, “Monster Mash,” has skyrocketed in popularity over the past five years, nearly bringing in an annual revenue of $1 million. (Is this Halloween’s answer to Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You?”)
• The Weeknd has been hosting haunted houses at Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights. This year’s “Nightmare Trilogy” maze even has an accompanying soundtrack.
• Singer-songwriter Ashnikko has been releasing “Halloweenie” songs for the past six years, which have exceeded 100 million streams in the US.
• Classic pop act Duran Duran released a Halloween album, Danse Macabre, last Halloween and is set to headline a concert at Madison Square Garden tonight.
• Spotify’s most popular Halloween playlist, “Halloween Party,” has 1.1 million followers, spiking 1,110% in listenership on October 1st and becoming the second-biggest playlist on the platform by October 21st. 

Closing Track: The Halloween music market may never be as big as Christmas’ (seasonal songs racked up $177 million for record labels in 2018, per Billboard), but that’s okay. Berklee College of Music professor George Howard says revenue from Halloween music generates, at most, one-third of Christmas song revenue. That’s still plenty of money. But as the horror genre permeates more of culture year-round, Halloween music could get close to closing that gap.