When Ashnikko was growing up in North Carolina, their family told them that Halloween was satanic. But for each of the last six years, the alt-pop rapper and singer (who uses she/they pronouns) has observed what remains a fairly unusual tradition: releasing a single tied to a day better known for costumes and candy.
This year’s track is the final entry in a seasonal series of gleefully lewd songs now packaged as an EP, “Halloweenie I-VI,” and available on “oxblood red” vinyl. Although perhaps not especially appropriate for a trick-or-treat night with the kids, the set reflects its creator’s idea of the holiday as a space for freedom through the grotesque.
“I feel very passionately about Halloween music,” Ashnikko said, noting the day’s roots in the Celtic harvest festival Samhain as well as its prominence in L.G.B.T.Q. history. “It’s camp. It’s carnal. It’s macabre. It’s, like, silly. It’s the only holiday where all of those get to exist at once.”
It’s also an $11.6 billion business, one that pop’s major players are increasingly tapping into. Ashnikko’s six “Halloweenie” songs have racked up a combined 100.3 million on-demand streams in the United States as of Oct. 17, according to the tracking service Luminate.
The Weeknd, who hosted a haunted house at Universal Studios Hollywood two years ago, has returned with “Nightmare Trilogy,” a maze with a soundtrack from the singer. It opened eight days earlier than in 2019.
“Monster Mash,” Bobby Pickett’s enduring Halloween anthem from 1962, has returned to the Billboard Hot 100 the last three years ahead of the holiday. And Billboard estimated last year that the hit could generate $1 million in annual combined revenue.
Rell Lafargue, the president of Reservoir, which owns Pickett’s publishing share, said money from the song has roughly tripled from 2019 to 2023. He also cited licensing opportunities, including greeting cards, wreaths and plush toys. There’s even a planned “Monster Mash” stage musical, aimed at a 2025 debut, and the song may figure into future movies and TV shows.
The Boulet Brothers, who host the Netflix horror-drag competition series “Dragula,” recently released their first Halloween EP, “Halloween House Party.” “Everybody has a Christmas album that they go to,” said Dracmorda, one half of the duo. “I wanted to make that for Halloween.”
Fueled by streaming, Halloween can be a way for artists who delve into darker themes — think Ethel Cain, Travis Scott, Rob Zombie — to tap into the zeitgeist before sleigh bells drown them out.
“Christmas got earlier and earlier over the course of the last eight years,” said Mark Tarnuzzer, a former Universal Music Group executive who is now the chief marketing and strategy officer at Naviro, an analytics platform for artists. “This is a very natural reaction.”
Evan Bogart, Amanda Warner (known as “MNDR”) and Peter Wade, pop songwriters for the likes of Beyoncé and Charli XCX, want to be Halloween music’s foremost re-animators. The trio in 2019 formed LVCRFT, a collective that produces “spooky music, apparel and digital collectibles,” and has since written more than 100 Halloween songs, Bogart said.
LVCRFT’s breakout song, “Skeleton Sam” from “This Is Halloween Vol. 1” (2019), has amassed 14.3 million streams in the United States, according to Luminate. In the United States, that number nearly doubled, from six million to 11.3 million, between October 2022 and October 2023, according to the tracking service. “When we started this, I remember my publisher legitimately said this isn’t a thing,” Warner said. “And now, five years later, they’re, like, ‘When’s the new record?’”
Beyond recording music, the group formed a production company, Spooky Never Sleeps, to create eerie scores and immersive experiences. Bogart said they hope it will be the musical version of Blumhouse, a juggernaut producer of horror TV and film. Halloween “has become a full business for six months,” Bogart said, referring to the span from May 1, celebrated by aficionados as “Halfoween,” to Halloween. “And then it taps slightly back in in December because of spooky Christmas stuff.”
The market for Christmas music is vast. In the United States, seasonal tunes generated $177 million for record labels in 2018, according to the most recent estimate from Billboard, and since then, the overall record industry has grown from $9.8 billion to $17.1 billion. Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” reportedly earned about $3 million in 2022.
Halloween music isn’t there yet, and may never be. But it needn’t reach Queen of Christmas levels to become a money spinner.
George Howard, a professor at the Berklee College of Music, estimated that revenue from Halloween music is about one-third to one-sixth of the number for Christmas music. He cautioned that the category is difficult to define: Michael Jackson’s horror-tinged 1982 megahit “Thriller” surely generates more royalties than “Monster Mash,” but it’s not strictly a Halloween song.
Radio stations have long been drawn to Halloween, at least for one day a year. “It has become an adult holiday, and radio has been all over it from a marketing and promotional standpoint,” said Fred Jacobs, president of Jacobs Media, a radio consulting company.
As with Christmas, the trend toward Halloween hits is driven largely by streams.
Spotify’s most popular Halloween playlist, Halloween Party, had more than 1.1 million followers as of Oct. 17, according to Chartmetric, a company that tracks data from streaming and social media. By comparison, the most popular Christmas playlist on Spotify, Christmas Hits, had more than 5.5 million.
“Halloween is really starting to put its hand up as a main contender for one of the key tent-pole moments in the year,” said Sulinna Ong, global head of editorial at Spotify. By Oct. 21, Halloween Party was the second-biggest playlist on the streaming service in the United States, and the sixth globally, according to the company. On Oct. 1, U.S. streams of Halloween Party spiked by about 1,110 percent.
Ong noted that the service also has evergreen playlists with titles like Villain Mode and Twilight Vibes that act as a “testing ground” for new artists and songs that might cross over to the more seasonal Halloween playlists.
It’s still unclear whether Halloween-centric artists can convert holiday listeners into long-term fans. According to Chartmetric, LVCRFT’s fan conversion rate — the ratio of followers to monthly listeners — tanks each October, a common occurrence for seasonal performers.
Still, as the existence of “Halfoween” suggests, demand for the sinister and unsettling has continued to come earlier and earlier — not entirely unlike Starbucks’ annual debut of pumpkin spice lattes. “Spooky is a culture,” said David Markland, executive director of Midsummer Scream Halloween Festival, which last July drew 50,000 horror fans to Long Beach, Calif.
For adherents to that culture, spookiness is about far more than pumpkin spice. Music by Ice Nine Kills, a horror-inspired metal band with 2.4 million monthly Spotify listeners, was for the first time included in a proper horror movie, the recent box-office hit “Terrifier 3.” “I love to see people coming around and joining us on the dark side,” said Spencer Charnas, the band’s frontman.
The Halloween spirit can also bewitch unlikely goths. Duran Duran last year released a Halloween-themed album, “Danse Macabre,” and on Oct. 31 the band is set to headline Madison Square Garden. “This came about entirely through joy,” said Nick Rhodes, the group’s keyboardist.
For Ashnikko, taking the spooky route to Halloween rewards makes sense because it genuinely fits their personality. “Sometimes when you’re selling things like music, the hardest thing is to do it in a way that doesn’t feel icky,” said George Shepherd, Ashnikko’s manager and an associate director at Various Artists Management.
This season, Ashnikko will be featured in the holiday expansion pack of The Sims, the popular video game. They are also scheduled to take over a Spotify radio show and perform at Red Rocks Amphitheater outside Denver. “Somebody the other day called me the Mariah Carey of Halloween,” Ashnikko said. “I really liked that.”
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