Pickup the flowers, grab some chocolates, and throw on a few classic love songs. Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day and each year a set of love-song standards jump up the On-Demand Audio (ODA) streaming ranks in the U.S. as people soundtrack their day.
Last year, Elvis Presley’s iconic “Can’t Help Falling in Love” rose from the #1,099 song one week before Valentine’s Day to #605 in U.S. ODA rank the week ending 2/16/23 as it picked up over 600k audio streams. The song also gained 1.1m ODA streams that same week throughout all territories to land at #659 globally with 6m streams.
Interestingly, when ranking songs by their week-over-week ODA percentage change during the week of Valentine’s Day in 2023 – and filtering for those released before 2000 with the all-important word “love” in the title – Elvis’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love” is the most-streamed at 2.4m and shows the fourth biggest spike, jumping 35% over the week before. However, in terms of the largest week-over-week growth, it’s Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman” that experienced the sharpest uptick with a 42% gain.
Whether it’s the holiday period each year in December or other key dates like 4th of July, music listeners share their experience through key songs that also reveal consumer mood and insights. According to our most recent U.S. Music 360 consumer research study, 63% of all music streamers report listening to music so that they can feel happy. And nearly 1 in 2 music streamers (46%) who listen to Oldies at least once per month are also 24% more likely to cite “nostalgia” as a reason for doing so when compared to the average U.S. music listener. Understanding how music listening changes throughout the year is key to aligning related marketing activities.
