The little-known reason for the Oasis reunion
Mining, advertising and Beetlemania in Ethiopia.
Hello,
It was weird timing that last week’s Stuff was about musical nostalgia and later that day the news of the Oasis reunion arrived. Many of you will not care for Oasis. You’ll point to lyrics like “I’m feeling supersonic, give me gin and tonic” and suggest they somehow manage to be both nonsensical and loutish at the same time. Fair.
For many of us however, their music captures something that isn’t meant to be captured. It’s a portal to something outside the mundaneness of life. Everyone has their own way of connecting to that thing. Whether it’s another band, religion, football, running, art, knitting, there are plenty of ways to transcend. In this case the antennae for whatever that thing is happens to be some scruffy blokes from Manchester.
Anyway onto The Business of Oasis. One doesn’t have to be a cynic to suggest the £50m they’re allegedly going to net each has some impact on their decision. Less known however is that Oasis get the publishing rights back to their music in 2025 (have a listen at 14:55) and the tour will significantly boost their value. Doubtless they will then flog said rights for hundreds of millions and Noel will be able to buy his superyacht.
Live forever,
Hugo
Chief Transcender
The Business of Stuff
P.S. If you’ve got a spare ticket going…
Announcement
So for the week’s biggest announcement….
To celebrate 100 editions of The Stuff I am going to be running a competition throughout September. Prizes include a year’s subscription to Masterclass, a month’s supply of free coffees and a mystery surprise I haven’t thought of yet. All you have to do to enter is get three people to subscribe to The Stuff. Simply send them the link below and you’ll be entered to all three draws.
The first prize draw will be next Sunday - good luck!
The Stuff
Mining boss takes life a bit too seriously ⛏️ - billionaire Chris Ellison has said he’d like to hold employees ‘captive all day long’ including not letting them walk down the road for a coffee. This would make sense (whilst being completely unethical) if we were talking about factory workers but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that time at desk does not equal good output.
Heinz bothers the whole of Italy with tinned spaghetti carbonara 🍝 - I still can’t believe I ate their tinned ravioli as a child but this really takes the pancetta. Gino would have a field day. Michelin star chef Alessandro Pipero just said “I don’t really know how to respond to this”. Alessandra de Dreuille, meals director at Kraft Heinz has had to go into hiding with a year’s supply of tinned carbonara.
Sothebys earnings plunge as everyone feeling less plush 🔨 - EBITDA has dropped 88% which is in part due to weakened luxury spending in China. The auction house struck a deal a few weeks ago with Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, largely to reduce the $1.8bn of long-term debt they have on their books.
Nobody knows what’s popular anymore 🧐 - thanks to the multitude of platforms and audience fragmentation it’s increasingly hard to determine what’s in vogue apart from saying stuff like “brat” and “slay”. The lack of a standard benchmark (a “view” means something different on every platform) makes life very difficult for advertisers who are the ones financing the whole thing.
The price of vinyl has risen massively 🎚️ - prices rose 25% between 2017 and 2023 largely thanks to a series of Covid-era supply chain issues. Experts expect this to level out as the wider market stabilises after a period of high inflation. Also everyone bloody loves records these days meaning supply has been further squeezed.
UK’s helicopter procurement has gone a bit sideways 🚁 - Airbus and Lockheed have pulled out of the competition to replace the 1970s Pumas. The contract is worth £1bn but the two companies have said they would not be able to deliver on it. It’s always a tough one defence spending, deeply bad vibes but unfortunately we have to have some choppers.
Ads are taking up a bigger proportion of podcasts 🎧 - they now take up 10.9% of runtime compared to 7.9% in 2022. This may be a win for the podcast industry but if someone tries to sell me a VPN one more time I’m going to kick off. I really don’t get why people who sell VPNs think we need VPNs so much. Like we’re not all plotting to overthrow the government and even if we were we’d be using burners and intricate hand signals.
Ethiopia has had Beetle-mania for decades 🪲 - Volksvagen Beetles have been in the country since the reign of Haile Selassie and remain in vogue thanks in part to the East African country’s weird car market which makes many cars incredibly expensive. They’ve also got a nostalgic pull as they’re the car everyone grew up with and so have become ‘living museums’.
Shops are buying stolen goods from shoplifters 🥷 - shoplifting is at a record high and it turns out that smaller shops are happy to go with the old “it fell off the back of a lorry” line to get their hands on cheap stuff that they can then sell on. It’s obviously the shoplifters who need to stop shoplifting but an estimated 70% of them are drug addicts so people also need to stop buying lamb chops off dodgy dave.
AI pizzas are a bit hit and miss 🍕 - let’s be honest, something without taste buds should not be designing recipes but Dodo Pizza in Dubai scored a bit of a hit when they asked ChatGPT to create “the best pizza for Dubai”. The result was a popular mix of shawarma, paneer, zaatar and tahini. There are of course also plenty of rogue suggestions like a strawberries and pasta calzone.
Quote of the week
“I’ve got four GCSEs mate, I’m not silly” - Liam Gallagher