Holiday music fandom is bigger than sports

We always hear that sports and music are the two things that bring people together across dividing lines, but when it comes to holiday time, I think music is the clear leader. Each December, something rare happens. The usual boundaries we draw around identity and taste dissolve as we all come together to celebrate a shared cannon of songs. Revisiting DMX’s rendition of “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer” is my favorite holiday tradition. But for you, it may be putting on Nat King Cole, Michael Bublé, Sia, or Kelly Clarkson to signal that it’s time to tap into the collective power of holiday fandom.

I’ve spent my entire career around artists, fans, culture, and the ways music moves among them. But every year, the holiday season reminds me of something simple: music culture is at its most powerful when it belongs to everyone at once.

Based on our own UPROXX content and audience insights, there’s scale behind that feeling: During the season, channels with strong holiday catalogs see an average +89% view surge in Q4, and individual holiday videos can spike +1,552% from November to December versus their annual average. That’s not a “moment”; that’s a multi-week, whole-household phenomenon.

When you look at who is actually listening, it’s everyone. UPROXX’s Holiday Hits & Classics playlists do a minimum of 200 million views per month during the holidays. Those songs reach about as even of a distribution you can get: ~52% female, 48% male, with 25–44 year-olds accounting for ~55% of views, and meaningful reach into both Gen Z and Boomers.

In a culture that chases the next big thing, this is the rare phenomenon that compounds with repetition. Combine that with YouTube and connected TV, and you have something that’s not just popular, but dependable, brand-safe, and measurable.

That “campfire” shows up in the metrics brands care about: longer CTV session times, higher repeat plays, and natural frequency without creative fatigue. In December, we routinely see artist channels jump ~9x in unique viewers versus the Jan-Oct baseline, with watch time growth even outpacing view growth. It’s attention that compounds, because the context (family, tradition, ritual) invites longer stays and replays.

For marketers, that means three practical truths:

• It’s forecastable. The ramp begins mid-November and peaks through December—easy to pace around Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and final-week gifting.
• It’s safe by construction. Adjacency is concentrated in official artist uploads and top curated playlists—high sentiment, low risk.
• It’s household-level reach. With 25%+ of views on CTV, you’re not just catching one person on a phone; you’re meeting families where they gather.

Here’s the uncomfortable comparison for sports: The biggest games are massive—but holiday music owns multiple weeks, every year, across millions of living rooms at once. Sports crescendos are episodic and outcome-dependent; holiday fandom is calendar-locked and loss-proof. Even the “off nights” perform because the ritual drives the view, not the scoreboard.

Sports and music both build community. But in December, only one reliably turns the largest screen in the house into a shared ritual that repeats year after year, day after day, title after title. That’s why, if you’re measuring cultural impact the way it’s actually experienced, together, on CTV, for weeks at a stretch, Holiday Music Fandom is Bigger than Sports.

And if you’re a brand, it’s not just bigger, it’s better: more predictable, more welcoming, and more likely to earn you a place in the moments people remember.