“I don’t want a lot for Christmas / There is just one thing I need / An answer to just one question / An estimate of Mariah Carey’s song royalties, please?”

No, my makeshift lyrics aren’t as catchy as the opening lines of Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” the 1994 jingle that became practically ubiquitous over the airwaves around holiday season.

But they do pose a question that probes into the black box of music-industry economics: How much money does the song earn for Carey, the song’s performer and so-called “Queen of Christmas,” each year?

Revenue estimates by Billboard suggest she made perhaps $2.7 million to $3.3 million in 2022, for example, from song downloads and on-demand streaming. It excludes other potentially lucrative revenue streams like Christmas TV specials.

But it’s hard to know a precise sum, largely because contractual details between Carey, her music label and song publishers aren’t public, experts said. The pop star’s publicist, Chris Chambers, didn’t return a request for comment submitted to his firm, The Chamber Group, about her royalties.

“Whatever it is, it’s a lot of money,” said Natasha Chee, a music, entertainment and intellectual property attorney at law firm Donahue Fitzgerald.

Spotify announced this month that the anthem was the first-ever holiday song to surpass 2 billion global streams. It has been the No. 1 song globally on Christmas Day each year since 2016, Spotify said.

The tune’s popularity has only grown: Total U.S. audio streams rose to 249 million in 2023, up about 49% from 167 million in 2019, according to Luminate, which tracks music industry data.

(As of Dec. 12, total U.S. streams of the song this year were down 8% relative to 2023, Billboard estimated. That’s partly a function of the shorter holiday season from a late Thanksgiving, experts said.)

The song “is a money machine,” said George Howard, a professor at the Berklee College of Music and former president of Rykodisc, an independent record label. “It’s a real phenomenon,” he said.

Howard, who also does consulting work to value music copyrights, estimates the chart-topper makes $2 million to $4 million in annual gross revenue.

Similarly, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, which specializes in music industry law, estimates the hit generates $3.4 million a year.

Over its 30-year existence, the song has made about $103 million in earnings, the law firm estimates. The projections include global streaming and non-streaming revenue sources, according to Manatt, which created Billboard’s royalty calculator.

The song’s 2 billion global Spotify streams alone earned $9.8 million in royalties, according to the calculator.

But Carey only gets a portion of those earnings.

More from Personal Finance:
Paying down debt is Americans’ top financial goal for 2025
There’s a higher 401(k) limit for 2025
These are the top 10 ‘housing hot spots’ for 2025

Music royalties are different from those of other works like books or photography.

That’s because there are two distinct royalty streams — one for music composition and another for sound recording, said Jordan Bromley, partner and head of Manatt Entertainment. Think of the former like the sheet music sitting on your piano (the songwriting), and the latter as the recorded song that you hear, he said.

Each has its own royalty structure. The royalties for music composition are received by songwriters and publishers, while those for sound recording are paid to song performers and their labels, Howard said.

Carey “has both the copyright to the song and the sound recording, so she’s getting paid on both sides,” Howard said.

“She’s getting paid six ways to Sunday,” he said.

A song’s writers and publishers — and not its performers — get the royalties when a song plays in a public space, such as on TV and radio, or in restaurants and retail stores, experts said. The U.S. is one of the few countries to have such a rule, Howard said.

This means that Carey (and Afanasieff, her co-writer) gets royalties whenever a cover version of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” plays in the public domain. Over 150 performers have covered the song, according to ASCAP, a performing rights organization.

Carey and Afanasieff split their writing credits with publishers including Universal Music, Sony Music and Kobalt Songs Music Publishing, according to ASCAP.

However, song recording generally brings in four to five times the revenue of songwriting, Bromley said.

“If you’re a songwriter with no record revenue, it’s hard to make a living even if you’re making hits,” he said.

The artist’s take of the recording revenue relative to the label’s can swing widely, anywhere from 20% up to 90%, depending on the contract, Bromley said. “All I Want for Christmas Is You” was released by Columbia Records, which is owned by Sony Music.

Afanasieff, Sony Music and Kobalt Songs Music Publishing didn’t return requests for comment. Universal Music Publishing Group declined comment.

The copyright for works published after Jan. 1, 1978, generally remains intact for the author’s lifetime, plus 70 years after the author’s death, according to Chee of Donahue Fitzgerald.

In the case of a joint work with two or more authors, such as “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” the rule applies to the last surviving author.

That means Carey’s estate will likely rake in royalties for decades, until the song eventually passes into the public domain, she said. When that happens, the song would join the ranks of Christmas classics like “Jingle Bells” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” which can generally be freely shared and adapted.

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday cut interest rates for the third time in 2024. Despite the move, mortgage rates increased.

The 30-year fixed rate mortgage spiked to 6.72% for the week ending Dec. 19, a day after the Fed meeting, according to Freddie Mac data via the Fed. That’s up from 6.60% from a week prior.

At an intraday level, the 30-year fixed rate mortgage increased to 7.13% on Wednesday, up from 6.92% the day before, per Mortgage News Daily. It notched up to 7.14% on Thursday.

The dot plot, which indicates individual members’ expectations for rates, showed officials see their benchmark lending rate falling to 3.9% by the end of 2025, equal to target range of 3.75% to 4%. After the latest rate cut, it’s currently at 4.25%-4.5%.

When the Fed made its first rate cut in September, it had projected four quarter-point cuts, or a full percentage point reduction, for 2025.

“That, in conjunction with Trump’s desired policies on tariffs, immigration and tax cuts — which are all inflationary — spooked the bond market,” Cohn said.

Mortgage rates also tend to move in anticipation of what the Fed is going to do in its upcoming meetings, said Jacob Channel, a senior economist at LendingTree.

For instance, mortgage rates declined this summer and early fall, in anticipation of the first interest rate cut since March 2020.

Therefore, mortgage rates might not do “anything particularly dramatic” in the face of the Fed’s actual meeting, he said. 

As Congress scrambles to avoid a government shutdown, the Senate is also poised to consider another bill that would increase Social Security benefits for some public workers.

But the bill, the Social Security Fairness Act, may undergo changes if some Senators’ efforts to add amendments are successful.

Per the original proposal, the Social Security Fairness Act calls for eliminating Social Security provisions known as the Windfall Elimination Provision, or WEP, and Government Pension Offset, or GPO, that have been in place for decades.

The WEP reduces Social Security benefits for individuals who receive pension or disability benefits from employment where they did not pay Social Security payroll taxes. The GPO reduces Social Security for spouses, widows and widowers who also receive their own government pension income. Together, the provisions affect an estimated 3 million individuals.

The bill has enthusiastic support from organizations representing teachers, firefighters, police and other government workers who are affected by the benefit reductions.

“You shouldn’t penalize people for income outside of a system when you’ve paid into it and earn that benefit,” said John Hatton, vice president of policy and programs at the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association. “It’s been 40 years trying to get this repealed.”

The bill has received overwhelming bipartisan support. The Social Security Fairness Act was passed by the House with a 327 majority in November.

Preliminary Senate votes this week have also shown a strong bipartisan support for moving the proposal forward. On Wednesday, the chamber voted with a 73 majority on a cloture for the motion to proceed. That was followed by a Thursday vote on a motion to proceed that also drew a 73-vote majority.

Experts say the Senate may soon hold a final vote. It could proceed in one of two ways — with amendments that alter the terms of the original bill or with a final vote without any changes.

The Social Security Fairness Act would cost an estimated $196 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Those additional costs come as the trust funds Social Security relies on to help pay benefits already face looming depletion dates. Social Security’s trustees have projected the program’s trust fund used to pay retirement benefits may be depleted in nine years, when just 79% of benefits may be payable.

Some senators who oppose the Social Security Fairness Act have expressed concerns about the pressures the additional costs would put on the program.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, who this week voted against moving the current version of the bill forward in the Senate, said this week he plans to propose an amendment to offset those costs by gradually raising the retirement age to 70 while also adjusting for life expectancy. Social Security’s full retirement age — when beneficiaries receive 100% of the benefits they’ve earned — is currently age 67 for individuals born in 1960 or later.

“It is absurd to entertain a proposal that would make Social Security both less fair and financially weaker,” Paul said in a statement. “To undo the damage made by this legislation, my amendment to gradually raise the retirement age to reflect current life expectancies will strengthen Social Security by providing almost $400 billion in savings.”

More from Personal Finance:
Answers to common questions on the Social Security Fairness Act
73% of workers worry Social Security won’t be able to pay benefits
Early retirement is a surprise for many workers, study finds

As of Friday morning, a total of six amendments to the bill had been introduced, according to Emerson Sprick, associate director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Some amendments call for replacing the full repeal of the WEP and GPO provisions with other changes.

One amendment from Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Joe Manchin, I-West Virginia, would instead put in place a more proportional formula to calculate benefits for affected individuals. That change, inspired by Texas Republican Rep. Jodey Arrington’s Equal Treatment of Public Servants Act, has a lot of support from policy experts and the Bipartisan Policy Center, Sprick said.

Social Security advocacy groups have pushed for larger comprehensive Social Security reform that would use tax increases to pay for making benefits more generous.

“We want to help in making this happen, but our preference was for it to be part of a much larger Social Security reform,” said Dan Adcock, director of government relations and policy at the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

To be sure, if amendments are successfully added to the bill, it would have to go back to the House.

“We’re hoping that that doesn’t come to that, because that could complicate matters, depending on the timing of how what’s going on with the [continuing resolution]” to avoid a government shutdown, Adcock said.