Christmas - it's all about the weather and the tunes

Spotify have released music streaming statistics for 2016 and the result is clear: weather and daylight hours affect the consumption of festive songs.

Malta was not part of the survey of the music-streaming service due to a lack of data.

Countries like Sweden and Norway, countries where snow, extreme cold and chillblains are prevalent have registered the highest number of Christmas-music streams, while in Brazil—a country with a comparable proportion of Christians—just one song in 150 was Christmas-themed in the 2016 Christmas season.

Even in data collected for American states show a very clear result. States that experience extreme cold and a whiter version of Christmas stream Christmas songs more frequently, with sand-dry, warm Texas and Nevada playing one Christmas song per 20.

Christmas pop songs are a genre in their own right, and a money-spinner at that. The 13 most popular Christmas songs on Spotify, a music-streaming service, have amassed one billion plays between them. The most popular of them, 'All I Want for Christmas Is You', written in 15 minutes and recorded by Mariah Carey in 1994, accounts for 210million of those plays. It has earned over $60million in royalties since its release.

Spotify has also shared the most streamed artists, tracks and albums of 2018.

The statistics show that 2018 undoubtably belonged to hip hop. With over 8.2 billion streams this year, Drake takes the crown as the world's most streamed artist. Following Drake in the category are Post Malone, XXXTENTACION, J Balvin and Ed Sheeran.

Releasing her highly-anticipated fourth album 'Sweetener' back in August, Ariana Grande has topped the list of Spotify's most streamed female artists in 2018. Hot on her heels is the pop sensation Dua Lipa, followed by Cardi B, Taylor Swift and Camila Cabello.