Big Brother Recordings GM Clare Byrne and head of creative and retail marketing Sarah Mansfield have detailed the "massive" impact Oasis' comeback has had on the band's streaming numbers.
The Britpop legends currently have in the region of 24.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify, where Wonderwall became the first song released in the 1990s to pass a billion streams.
The already high level of interest in the group's back catalogue has skyrocketed in the wake of Liam and Noel Gallagher's reunion tour announcement last August. Big Brother and Oasis won the Catalogue Marketing Campaign category at the Music Week Awards last month.
"The streaming pick up was absolutely massive; streams went up 750% in the hour following the tour announcement and there were over 11 million Oasis streams on the day the tickets went on sale," Mansfield told Music Week. "There was a 300% increase in Alexa voice requests on Amazon Music and their audience on socials spiked 20-30%, with Instagram up by 70%.
"We’re working really closely with all the partners, both digital and physical, to make sure that we’re making the absolute most of it that we can and doing as many industry firsts as we can across all of the platforms, doing things that you wouldn’t have seen Oasis necessarily doing before.”
Speaking in the June edition of Music Week, which features an 18-page Oasis special paying homage to the group's legacy, the pair elaborated on how they have been able to take the band's success on streaming platforms to a higher level.
“Part of it is being really proactive," said Big Brother Recordings/Ignition general manager Byrne. "We see a lot of organic pick-up on tracks and we really try and amplify that wherever we can, be it on the socials, other platforms or with retailers. Oasis are referenced by artists across many genres and we’re always seeing covers by current artists – a recent example is Bring Me The Horizon’s cover of Wonderwall.
"Obviously, Noel and Liam have both had incredibly successful solo careers and played Oasis tracks in their sets, so we consistently see that interest in the catalogue is building. The core focus is for us to keep driving discovery and spotlighting the tracks that fans are less aware of.”
We see this mass surge of interest and excitement around the band as something that we’ll be building on well into next year and beyond
Clare Byrne
Mansfield added: “We try to make sure we’ve always got something coming out, whether that be new lyric videos and visualisers, or repurposed archive content that we’ve spruced up and made to look really special, or that’s unseen. We’re constantly putting out new content to drive people to stream.”
Byrne noted that Oasis first joined streaming platforms in 2014, around the 20-year anniversary of the band’s first release.
"Back then, it was basically introducing the whole catalogue to a younger audience, a new audience, with the storytelling and using all these moments that were happening to bring them front and centre," she said.
"We see this mass surge of interest and excitement around the band as something that we’ll be building on well into next year and beyond. It’s going to be critical for us to drive streaming, but also create that swell of support and excitement around the band in a meaningful, long-term way.”
Oasis landed three albums in the Top 5 two weeks in a row last September, attaining their first No.1 in 14 years with their debut long player Definitely Maybe following the release of multiple 30th anniversary variants of the album.
“In terms of the catalogue, that was probably the biggest release that we’d done,” said Mansfield. "The timing was just great.
Byrne said there was “so much positivity that the live announcement in tandem with it was just perfect, it was just so symbiotic”.
“The anniversary itself was on that Friday so we had all of our plans in place with the campaign for that,” she said. “We’d been running that all summer and we’d just dropped the video interview that Noel did with [Louder Than War’s] John Robb, which was incredibly insightful and had such a positive sentiment about his recollection from that time, what a great band they were and how the fans made them that band, and how unique Liam’s voice was.
“Noel was really involved with the Definitely Maybe 30th anniversary. It was his plan to unearth the [Monnow Valley session] recordings and remix them and get them ready for the release, that came from him. But everything goes through both of them, they both have a say in anything artwork or audio related. They’re both very integral to whatever we do. It makes it personal for the fans when they know that Noel’s been the one that sat there and mixed the tracks, or that Liam’s decided something to do with the artwork, that they’re both hands-on.”
We have spent the last year-and-a-half getting the whole catalogue transformed into Spatial Audio, which has been an absolutely huge feat
Sarah Mansfield
The team launched the official Oasis TikTok around the 25th anniversary of …Morning Glory? with original band footage and sharing fan-generated content. The channel has amassed more than 850,000 followers and 7.7m likes.
"It has grown and grown," said Byrne. "Just under half of the audience now on TikTok are aged 18-24, which is incredible, and the Oasis reunion hashtag had 100 million views in two weeks. It’s the same again, not only putting content out in terms of the archive but being reactive, using UCG and jumping on trends."
Oasis' fourth record (and first to be released on Big Brother Recordings) Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants celebrated its 25th anniversary in February, a birthday the label marked with a limited-edition vinyl reissue. Meanwhile, plans are afoot to mark another milestone for their all-conquering second album (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? which will turn 30 in August.
“It’s really important for us to do the album justice and what we’ve got planned is really special, really exciting, and being able to work that alongside the live dates is going to be wonderful,” said Byrne.
“We have also spent the last year-and-a-half getting the whole catalogue transformed into Spatial Audio, which has been an absolutely huge feat," added Mansfield. "As far as we know, no other legacy act has done this to this extent. It’s massive; it brings the whole entire catalogue to a whole new audience to be heard in a completely new way.”
(What’s The Story) Morning Glory? is one of the biggest-selling albums in UK history, with 5,371,435 sales to date. Definitely Maybe has 2,849,624 sales, while Be Here Now has 2,059,249. The group have passed the million sales mark for Time Flies 1994-2009 (2,123,886), Stop The Clocks (1,410,449), Heathen Chemistry (1,207,612) and Don’t Believe The Truth (1,033,257).
“Time Flies [the 2010 compilation bringing together all of the band’s UK single releases] has been so consistent," said Mansfield. "As with (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? and Definitely Maybe, which were revealed as the two most streamed albums of the ’90s [by the Official Charts Company for National Album Day 2023], they’re always in the charts. It’s constantly giving the chance to drive back to all the key singles, highlighting key tracks.
"It’s the 15th anniversary of it in June and we’ve just done a Record Store Day vinyl and, with the new collection of fans that have come on board since the Live ’25 news, it’s a great opportunity to highlight the singles and educate them about the band. Across streaming, that’s crucial.”
- Music Week's June issue also includes an exclusive interview with Oasis co-manager Alec McKinlay, while a selection of top names from across the industry as they reflect on their favourite Oasis tracks.
