What holiday tunes are hot?
ASCAP released a list of its most popular holiday songs being played on stations nationwide. It compiled data tracked by its airplay monitoring service Mediaguide in the period from Oct. 1 to Nov. 26, and said dozens of stations were already on with Christmas songs in that period. There are now 156 holiday stations on the air.
The organization said 1,329 different holiday songs were played on radio stations through Monday, with 1.26 million spins. WEXM(FM) in Indianapolis was the first station to switch to all-holiday music programming — on Oct. 8.
ASCAP found that the top most-played holiday song from its own repertoire was “Sleigh Ride,” written by Leroy Anderson and Mitchell Parish, played 48,737 times.
Other popular plays on the ASCAP list include “Winter Wonderland,” “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” “Jingle Bell Rock” and “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.”
The list is an aggregation of all artist versions of each song.
