Why the Music Biz—and Cher—Wants to Start Christmas in October

Earlier this month, Cher and her beloved vocoder sang “DJ Play a Christmas Song,” giving us a house-friendly introduction to the music icon’s first holiday album, Christmas. “I had no intention of doing a Christmas album,” Cher casually admitted to Billboard in a recent interview. “But [Warner Records] said, ‘Why don’t you do a Christmas album, Cher?’ and I said if I can do my version, I’ll do it, and they were very pleasant.”

Christmas, which arrived last Friday, is indeed very pleasant. The album plays like an episode of Cher’s ’70s variety show, as she performs familiar songs with professional commitment, made more fun by the hint that she can’t take anything too seriously. (Watch her memorable 1975 duet with David Bowie and you’ll see what I mean.) She sounds equally invested in standards as strong as “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” and Stevie Wonder’s “What Christmas Means to Me” as she does on the sappy Hallmark-card-set-to-music “This Will Be Our Year” or the hip-hop-inflected, Tyga-featuring “Drop Top Sleigh Ride.”

Really, though, Christmas is as much about Cher as it is about Christmas; that much is clear in a trailer for the album that’s packed with footage from her prolific, decades-long career. Her fame is the album’s subtext, just as it was for holiday releases from Dolly Parton, Carrie Underwood, Kelly Clarkson, and the Backstreet Boys.

But there’s something else those albums have in common: they were all released in either September or October. Never mind the people who argue that Christmas music shouldn’t be played until after Thanksgiving; these artists are making a case for cueing up “Jingle Bells” before kids go trick-or-treating.

Why are holiday albums hitting the market so early? The answers are mostly prosaic. First, there’s a limited window for holiday music sales, most of which happen in the fourth quarter of the year. The longer an album is out, the better its chances of selling well.

Simon Edwards, director of product management for Craft Recordings, explains that labels release holiday music in October because “it’s when physical retailers ask us for it.” He adds, “The sooner we can get our records out and available, it’s better for physical retailers” who want albums in stock as soon as they gear up for the holidays.

Craft Recordings, the reissue arm of Concord Music Group, boasts in its collection A Charlie Brown Christmas. This year, the label has six new holiday releases, including Stax Records’ Stax Christmas, jazz pianist Dave Brubeck’s A Dave Brubeck Christmas, and the salsa holiday classic Asalto Navideño, Vol. 2 by Willie Colón and Héctor Lavoe. All are already out. Craft’s goal, Edwards says, is determined by the way that buying has changed.

“Everything is on demand now,” he notes. “We want to make sure that if somebody is going on [Apple TV+] and watching A Charlie Brown Christmas in September because they want to start feeling in the Christmas spirit, that we have an album available for them to go buy.”

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Black Friday once signaled the start of the Christmas shopping season, but in recent years, concerns about inflation have prompted families to start shopping in October to spread out their purchases. A Bankrate.com poll shows that 50 percent of Americans have started or plan to start their holiday shopping before Halloween this year, and the surest sign of consumers’ holiday shopping behavior is Costco, which started stocking Christmas gifts in August.

“It seems quite early,” Edwards admits. “But we’re seeing sales, so people are buying them.”

Indeed, Craft Recordings didn’t even wait for October to begin its holiday blitz, releasing a CD version of Stax Christmas in September. These companies hustle their music to market because even though Christmas music gets little respect, it’s big business. Billboard estimated that it raked in $177 million in 2018, and according to Ben Sisario of The New York Times, “since then the overall recorded music business has grown by well over 50 percent.”

“White Christmas” established the blueprint for success by selling so well in 1942 that it topped the charts again in 1944 and charted every year after that through Christmas 1973. Now, Christmas hits return yearly, and songs as old as Bobby Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock” (1957), Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” (1958), and Burl Ives’ “A Holly Jolly Christmas” (1964) annually crack Billboard’s Hot 100 next to contemporary hitmakers.

Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” regularly tops those charts and remains the holiday music gold standard, having earned more than $60 million since its release and now raking in more than $10 million a year. But any song that gains that kind of holiday stature can be similarly lucrative. Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime” pulls in between $400,000 and $600,000 a year, while Wham!’s “Last Christmas” is estimated to earn $572,590 a year.

The possibility of finding another enduring hit means record labels plan for it. Whereas they once strategized to release new music by major artists in time for holiday gift sales, they now focus specifically on Christmas music. Conversations with artists throughout the year explore holiday music possibilities, with labels nailing down their marketing plans in the summertime.

Craft Recordings starts planning holiday releases at least nine months in advance, and its strategy is built in part around its bona fide yuletide classic, A Charlie Brown Christmas. To date, Craft has reissued the album in 157 different forms with at least one new version a year since 2004, whether it’s a picture disc, a repackaged CD, or an expanded version with bonus tracks. This year, they have a new picture disc sold exclusively through Barnes and Noble.

“We didn’t want to overwhelm the market because we did a lot last year,” Edwards says. That included a release of the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s recording sessions for the album, flubs, transitional versions, and more. Cher’s Christmas has already taken its first step down this path, as it was released with three different covers, each with a different look for Cher, including one that presents her in Frozen-like finery and blonde hair.

Getting Christmas music on the market early gives it the best chance to make an impact, and no one illustrates that better than Pentatonix, the a cappella group that was introduced to the world in 2011 on the short-lived singing competition show The Sing-Off. Pentatonix is the best-selling Christmas album artist, according to Billboard, with six albums or EPs from the past decade, all of which were released in October.

Talk of sales may sound quaint in the streaming era, but the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) found that revenues from streamed music grew to $5.9 billion in the first half of 2021, which accounted for 84 percent of total music revenues for that period. For Christmas music, that highlights the importance of getting on streaming playlists, which have become one of the primary ways that people listen to and discover music, and that artists, in turn, can reach new audiences and get their music played alongside bigger or more mainstream acts. Cher’s new songs will undoubtedly end up on Christmas music playlists this year, and Jeff Turlick, composer of the theatrical rock institution the Blue Man Group—which is releasing its first holiday EP this year—hopes the group can find its way onto those same playlists.

“Within a single playlist, Blue Man Group can exist next to Mariah Carey, Nat King Cole, John Lennon, Wham!, Gene Autry, Lizzo, and The Chipmunks,” Turlik explains.

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And the earlier these artists can get on those playlists, the better—even if it means trading pumpkin for peppermint sooner than one might deem socially acceptable. When Idina Menzel released Holiday Wishes on Oct. 14, 2014, she thought it was way too soon. “I think that’s ridiculous!” she told Time. “I’m barely into Halloween with my son! I completely understand if people aren’t ready for it until Thanksgiving. That’s when Christmas comes alive for me.”

Nevertheless, record companies will keep making “Christmas in October” a reality—because, as Edwards points out, “Streaming puts in every consumer’s hands the opportunity to start Christmas whenever they want. You could go home now and listen to Christmas music and watch Christmas movies until the end of the year.”

Cher—along with Brandy, Jon Pardi, Seth MacFarlane, and all the other artists releasing new holiday albums this year—is certainly hoping you do just that. ’Tis the season, all the time.

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