More Oasis

If you don't get on the gravy train, you're a hater.

Oasis played five dates in America, in large venues. Let's just call it 80k a night, even though that's excessive. That means that...

400,000 people went to see Oasis.

In a country of 340.1 million.

Could they have sold more tickets? ABSOLUTELY! The Oasis tour was the ultimate in FOMO. Hell froze over, get it while you can. It wasn't only oldsters who went to the gigs, but youngsters too. And if you're on social media you've been exposed to video after video of the throng singing along, as well as Liam with his sneering voice actually endearing himself to the audience.

Fine. But is this what the mass of Americans want? Do the masses want ANYTHING?
______________________

From: Tim Brunelle
Subject: Lizzo on TikTok

She's speaking your truth!

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8Sdw7HM/
______________________

Watch this video. Wherein Lizzo says it's nearly impossible to break through and your only hope is to focus on your hard core fans and superserve them.

This is a completely different paradigm from yesteryear. Evidence of which was displayed on last night's VMAs. Once a must-see, now a drive by car crash. Most stars appearing for the publicity. Is there any underlying meaning? This was the 41st show. Talk about long in the tooth...

Kind of like the classic rockers, who if not retired are positively geriatric. But the boomers who supported them then still believe, you can't say anything negative about their heroes of yore, even though they're on their last legs.

So there's no perspective. But a lot of people yelling telling you if you don't agree you're dog sh*t. It's not much different from politics.

As for the media... They LOVE this stuff! All-encompassing tours/shows that they can milk for months. It's kind of like all the press about "White Lotus." I gave up after the first season, that was enough.

But it isn't much different from the hype about "Succession" and "Severance."

What do all these shows have in common? Like tours, they play out week by week, keeping the story alive. But the viewers?

One of the biggest hits of the summer was "Happy Gilmore 2." What is a hit? SOMETHING PEOPLE WATCH!

"'Happy Gilmore 2,' the 29-years-later sequel to Adam Sandler's golf comedy, set a record on Nielsen's streaming charts for its premiere weekend. The film amassed 2.89 billion minutes of viewing time in the United States from July 25-27, the highest single-week total for a movie in the five-year history of the ratings provider's streaming charts. Happy Gilmore 2's total — 2.893 billion, to be precise..."

http://bit.ly/4geyU43

Yet media coverage of "Happy Gilmore 2" was de minimis.

As for "KPop Demon Hunters," despite the recent press about live showings, the reality is that the film was released on June 20th, to veritable crickets. The fans adored it, watched it multiple times, but the media ignored it. The tracks dominated the Top Ten and there still were no stories. Because the success did not fit the classic paradigm. Of advance hype, continuing press, the milking of every ounce of potential news out of a production. No, that is reserved for classic fare released by classic streamers.

BUT THE AUDIENCE DOESN'T CARE!

And how many people care about Oasis?

If Oasis was as big as fans and attendees want you to believe, there would be concomitant streaming evidence. But there's not a single Oasis track in the Spotify Top 50. You'll find Coldplay and Fleetwood Mac and Radiohead, but not Oasis. Because despite the magic of "Wonderwall," it's a niche enterprise.

As a matter of fact, only two Oasis tracks have in excess of a billion streams on Spotify, "Wonderwall" has 2,473,583,534 and "Don't Look Back in Anger" has 1,152,938,602. As a matter of fact, other than "Champagne Supernova," which has 515,735,185 streams, not a single other Oasis track has half a billion streams, most nowhere close!

Fleetwood Mac has four billion streamers, with "Dreams" at over 2 billion. Radiohead has two tracks at more than a billion, with "Creep" over two. Coldplay? They have a double digit number of billion streamers.

So where does Oasis fit in here? Definitely a significant act, but based on the press and the buzz you'd believe they're huge in America, dominant, when that's completely untrue.

But if you say that...

Let's have a little perspective. There are fifty percent more people in America than there were in the heyday of stadium shows back in the seventies. Meaning a lot more acts can sell a lot more tickets. Kudos. But if you're trying to convince me they're dominant, I'm laughing. They're NICHE! Why can Lizzo see this and seemingly nobody else?

My point is not to diss Oasis. Then again, I'll diss the fans, who'd have you believe going to a show is like going to see the Beatles. Hell, Oasis wasn't that big in America even in their heyday. It's a thirty year old band. If Noel Gallagher wasn't a member he'd be pissing all over it. But no, he's silent in this dash for cash.

Welcome to America. With niche news whose attendant readers/viewers believe everybody is in on the story, or should be.

My inbox is full of e-mail from right wingers complaining that the NYT, WSJ and WaPo are not covering the stories all over Fox, never mind the right wing blogosphere. Meanwhile, stories in the aforementioned NYT, WSJ and WaPo are not covered on Fox. And you can't convince either side that these are not huge stories. They'll argue about it, vociferously.

The same way they'll tell you that if you don't think everybody in the country is enamored of, enthralled by, foaming at the mouth over Oasis or Taylor Swift, you're just plain wrong.

But in this case, they're wrong.

But you can't convince them of it.


--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1

If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25

To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25