The winter season holiday seasons may well be several weeks away, but the holiday break new music season is in comprehensive swing, sweeping department retailer loudspeakers and reworking Americans’ audio-listening behavior.
Nevertheless, San Franciscans — at least, San Francisco Spotify people — appear to be embracing this craze a bit much less enthusiastically than the U.S. as a whole.
Spotify releases weekly charts by its region’s listeners exhibiting the 100 most preferred music streaming that week. The Chronicle examined the company’s most modern charts, which encompass the 7 days of Nov. 26 to Dec. 2, for the 9 most populous American cities, plus San Francisco and the country overall. (We would have seemed at the 10 most populous, but the 10th, San Jose, is not available separately on the system.) We then counted the full selection of overtly Xmas- and wintertime vacation-themed songs that appeared on each and every region’s major 100 most common song record for that 7 days.
Total, the details shows that the country as a full loves holiday break music rather a little bit more than its largest towns do. The U.S. at this time has 31 holiday getaway-themed songs on its leading 100, this means virtually a 3rd of its largest hits right now are Christmasy. The average selection of vacation music throughout the towns we appeared at, in the meantime, was just 16.5.
So considerably, San Francisco’s Spotify consumers are liking Xmas songs even much less than most important metropolitan areas. The metropolis has just 14 Christmas tunes on its leading 100 ideal now. That is fewer tunes than 6 of the 9 key cities we looked at, and significantly reduced than the U.S. all round. Los Angeles is the musical Grinch of the team, with only nine Christmas-themed tracks in its leading 100.
Philadelphia, on the other hand, is the most Christmas songs-obsessed key metropolis in the country as of late November. 1-quarter of the city’s recent 100 most streamed tracks are Christmas-themed.
We also calculated a “Christmas score” for each and every region based on their Christmas songs’ positions on the major-100 charts a increased score signifies that the city has far more Christmas-themed tracks higher on their charts, when a decrease rating signifies it has fewer Christmas music that are obtaining streamed considerably less. For the rating, a song with a position of No. 1 gets 100 points, a song with a No. 2 position 99 factors, and so on.
The Christmas scores for just about every town line up pretty nicely with the quantity of tracks every has on its chart, nevertheless Phoenix and San Antonio’s positions are switched. Philadelphia has the maximum Xmas score of any city, at about 1,200 — nevertheless the country’s all round is continue to drastically increased, at pretty much 1,600.
When the over-all acceptance of holiday break tunes in every single city might vary extensively, the best tunes continue to be remarkably constant. The solitary most popular holiday getaway-themed tune in every place is, unsurprisingly, Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Xmas Is You.” In the previous 7 days of November, the effervescent sing-along preferred created it to the major 20 most-streamed checklist in every single area, and in the U.S. overall, it stood at No. 6.
The normal ranking of Carey’s smash hit across towns is 11.4. Some other preferred tracks across cities include “Rockin’ All-around the Xmas Tree” as carried out by Brenda Lee (15.8), “White Christmas” as done by Bing Crosby (17.9) and “Jingle Bell Rock” by Bobby Helms (19.3).
The vacation time is continue to early, and potentially L.A. and San Francisco’s scores will rise relative to other areas’ as Xmas and other winter season holidays inch closer. Only time, and supplemental knowledge, will notify.
Susie Neilson is a San Francisco Chronicle personnel author. E-mail: [email protected] Twitter: @susieneilson
