Finding Songs
How to Choose a Holiday Song You Can Still Release This Season
By the Starchild Music team · October 13, 2026 · 6 min read
The short answer
Choose a holiday song by asking three questions: does it sound like a different holiday record than the standards listeners already know, does it fit your voice in a comfortable key, and can it live on your catalog after December. Listeners start looking for festive music in September and October, and the window for getting a new track mixed, mastered and submitted is short, so decide on the song in the next few days.
Most holiday release advice is about the calendar. This guide is about the harder question that comes first: which song should you put your name on? If you have already chosen, our Christmas single timeline covers the schedule.
The good news is that the decision does not need weeks. It needs a short list and four honest checks.
Why the choice matters more than it used to
The festive season on streaming keeps stretching. RouteNote, citing Spotify data, reports that listening has a first surge around September 1 and a second wave in October. By December 1, 2025, thirty holiday tracks were in the US Top 50, compared with fourteen on the same date in 2019.
Holiday playlist creation in the US rose 60% year over year between October 2024 and October 2025, according to the same report. More listeners looking means more room for a new song, but also more new songs competing for them.
Cover or original?
Hypebot's guide to holiday releases says both approaches work. Covers borrow nostalgia and are easy to search for. Originals appeal to listeners who want something that sounds new.
There is a licensing catch with covers. Hypebot points out that many people assume the classics are old enough to be free to use, but most popular Christmas standards written after 1926 still need a mechanical license, and only a smaller group such as "Jingle Bells" and "Silent Night" are in the public domain.
An original song skips that question. If you are weighing it, our guide to original songs to cover instead of standards explains the idea.
Four checks before you commit
- Mood: decide whether you want cozy, joyful, bittersweet or party. A single clear mood gets a song placed on a playlist and into a listener's evening far more easily than a mix.
- Voice and key: sing the chorus at full volume, not in a whisper. If the highest note makes you tense, move the key before you decide the song is wrong.
- Arrangement: can you picture it in a finished form you could record in the time you have? A sparse acoustic song asks less of a schedule than a big band number.
- Staying power: does it only work on December 24, or could it return every year? A song about a specific feeling of winter, home or missing someone will outlast one that is a list of holiday objects.
The case for a song that lasts past December 26
Hypebot's guide says the holiday listening season "can be very short": it begins in mid-November, accelerates by Thanksgiving and drops considerably after Christmas. That timing is why a one-season novelty is a risky choice.
RouteNote quotes a music manager who calls a successful holiday track "a little ATM," because it earns again every year. A song written around winter, family or distance can return each year without feeling stale, and it gives you a reason to re-promote.
Hypebot also warns that much holiday listening is passive, playlist-driven listening. A strong holiday song can give you a short streaming boost, but it only turns into new fans if people go on to explore the rest of your catalog.
Searching for the song
On Starchild you can describe what you want in plain words, such as "warm acoustic winter song about coming home," and the search will look for a match. You can also search by a line of lyrics or a writer's name.
Every song can be heard free in several production styles and voices, with pitch and tempo controls. That lets you test whether a ballad also works as a jazz-leaning arrangement before you spend anything. When you find one, see what each license covers and read our questions to ask before you license a song.
What to do this week
Pick three candidates, sing each chorus in the key you would actually record, and listen to each in two different styles. Choose the one you could imagine singing next December too.
Then work backward. Hypebot's suggested schedule has mixing and mastering done by late October and platform submission by early November. Spotify's help pages ask that you deliver music to your distributor at least seven days before release if you want to pitch it to editors, and distributors can take longer than that, so check yours.
Pick the mood your listeners are in
Holiday listening is not one mood. Some people want a loud party playlist while they cook, and some want something quiet at the end of a long day. Pick the corner you can serve well.
A good habit is to write the mood in two words before you listen to a single song. "Warm and nostalgic" will send you in a different direction from "funny and upbeat," and it stops you from drifting toward whatever you heard last.
Spotify's playlist pitch form lets you tag a song with up to two moods, as Spotify for Artists explains. If you can name yours in two words, your song is probably clear enough to be pitched.
Keep it playable live
A holiday song earns its keep in December shows, school concerts, markets and living rooms. That makes live performance part of the decision, not an afterthought.
Ask whether you could play it with one guitar or piano, in a noisy room, with people half listening. A song that holds up that way is more useful to you than one that only works with a full studio arrangement. Your Starchild license covers performing the song live, so it can go straight into your December set.
A quick scoring sheet
If you are stuck between two or three songs, score each from one to five on the same short list. Add up the totals and go with the highest, unless your gut strongly disagrees.
- Does the chorus stay in my head after one listen?
- Does it sit well in my voice in a key I can sing at full volume?
- Does the mood match the listeners I want to reach?
- Could I perform it live with just myself and one instrument?
- Will it still sound right in January or next November?