Mariah Carey’s holiday classic, “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” is the gift that keeps on giving for its writers and label. In 2022, the master recording of Carey’s version of her song, co-written with Walter Afanasieff, generated 2.181 million song consumption units in the United States, according to Luminate. Of that, nearly 51,000 were from track downloads, 229.7 million came from on-demand audio streams, 123.5 million came from video on-demand streams and 29.1 million from programmed streams.
Combined, those plays and downloads generated $1.8 million in the United States for Carey and her label, Sony Music, Billboard estimates.
Meanwhile, the song’s publishing, including mechanicals for the track from the physical sales of the five Carey albums it appears on brought in another $602,000 last year.
However, the United States only accounted for 59.2% of download sales and 30.6% of on-demand streaming, so when you look at the song globally and take into account a total of 85,000 song downloads and 1.15 billion streams, Billboard estimates that in 2022 the Carey master recording version of the song brought in more than $5.3 million, while its publishing royalties generated another $3.2 million. Combined, that comes to almost $8.5 million in global revenue and publishing royalties.
Of the master recording revenue, Billboard estimates Carey’s royalties at $1.86 million, which would leave Sony with $3.44 million.
As for publishing, she is one of two songwriters credited on the song —Afanasieff being the other — so if they each wrote 50%, that means that Carey’s share of the publishing would be $1.59 million. If she owns her publishing, after a 10% administration fee, her take-home pay would be $1.43 million. If she has a 75/25 co-publishing deal, her share would be just over $1.19 million; and if she doesn’t own the publishing on that song, her songwriter publishing royalties would be about $795,000.
This estimate excludes revenue from whatever financial arrangements were struck for Christmas TV specials and soundtracks from those specials, which likely is very lucrative. It also excludes cover versions of the song; according to Songview, about 125 performers have covered it, while the Mechanical Licensing Collective database says it’s matched the song to over 25,000 recordings.
According to Songview, the joint ASCAP and BMI song database system, the publishers for Carey’s holiday staple are Beyondidoliztion and Universal Music, both administered by Universal Music Corp., which probably means Universal Music Publishing Group; Sony/ATV Tunes Inc. and Tavla Vista Music, both administered by Sony Music Publishing; and Higpnosis SFH I Ltd, administered by Kobalt.
UPDATE: This post was updated on Dec. 18, 2023, at 1:40 p.m. with 2022 numbers.
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