By Walt Hickey

Celsius

As recently as 2012, energy drink company Celsius had a market cap of $5 million. Today, it’s got an 11 percent market share of the $19 billion energy drink industry, with revenues over $1.3 billion and a market cap of $9 billion. Its success is primarily driven by being the right beverage for the moment, fitting in snugly with trends such as higher caffeine content, new popularity among the health and fitness crowd and not just the all-nighter crowd, and fruit flavorings over energy drinks that taste like chemistry experiments.

Christopher Doering, Food Dive

Windsor

It’s a huge time for the Windsor fandom, the group of insatiable fans of a family of somewhat British, mostly German landlords whose main claim to fame is tracing their family to William the Conquerer. The latest figure of obsession is Charles III, whose subplot became front and center at the conclusion of the long-running Elizabeth II plotline. The fandom is difficult to get into and rather controversial in many parts of the world, but the new release of a sort-of NFT, sort-of numbered collectible that contains stored value — a “banknote with Charles III’s face on it” from a group called the “Bank of England” that the Windsor brand tapped for the activation — has set the devotees ablaze. New “pounds” (which are like the dollar or the euro but accepted in vastly fewer places) with Charles’ face appeared in June, and the ones with the lowest serial numbers have been auctioned off for £914,127, over 11 times their value of £78,430. A £10 note with the serial number HB01 000002 sold for £17,000.

Kevin Peachey, BBC

Cassettes

Last year 430,000 cassettes were sold in the United States, five times the level of a decade ago, as the music industry looks to the ascent of vinyl and offers listeners literally anything they have left in the back, format-wise. Taylor Swift had two albums in the top 10 bestselling cassettes, a group that also contained the Barbie soundtrack and a Phoebe Bridgers record. Now, setting aside that the vinyl resurgence was due to the inherent audio advantages of that format, while the tape boom is reviving a format that sounds worse than what not only came after it but indeed before it, I want to take this to its logical conclusion: release the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack on piano roll. Sell me a Mountain Goats record on a wax cylinder — it’s the only way to enjoy the lo-fi sound of the earlier records. If you put out the next Taylor Swift album in Dictabelt, Tefifon or Fidelipac, dang it, I’ll buy them.

Joseph Pisani, The Wall Street Journal

ſkeletal ſcandal

A new paper published in Antiquity conducted an ancient DNA study at the 17th-century colony of Jamestown in Virginia, studying the remains of what are believed to be the first colonists, buried at a church that existed from 1608 to 1616. Two graves near the altar in the church were believed to belong to Sir Ferdinando Wenman and Captain William West, both of whom were members of the West family. But, and here’s the fascinating part, a little scandal has been discovered, as the two men are related through the maternal line. This would settle a posthumous battle over Captain West’s holdings, indicating that he was the son of an unmarried aunt of Baron Thomas West, a child born out of wedlock and left out of official documents.

Antiquity

Tonka

The tonka bean is a seed from South America that has a heady almond-vanilla scent often found in perfumes. In 1954, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned the bean from food amid evidence that the chemical coumarin in the plant causes liver damage. Outside the U.S., it’s still legal and appears in desserts. However, scuttlebutt has grown that the FDA isn’t exactly enforcing the ban and kicking down the doors of establishments that use the seed in desserts, so the tonka bean has been showing up on pastry chefs’ menus at high-end spots despite being technically illegal.

Tanya Bush, T Magazine

Solar

Solar energy production is up, and by a lot, with utility-scale solar facilities generating 118 terawatt-hours through the end of July, up 36 percent over the same period of last year. Wind energy production was likewise up 8 percent, to 275 terawatt-hours, with the combined energy production of renewables clocking in at 393 terawatt-hours, beating out coal with 388 terawatt-hours. Overall, wind and solar are up to 16 percent of U.S. power generation through July, an impressive performance.

Benjamin Storrow, E&E News

Undead

Musicians who have long since died are still nonetheless scoring some major brand deals, thanks to the rights holders of their estates who are still finding ways to squeeze money out of music catalogs. Take the estate of Whitney Houston, which in 2019 saw 50 percent sold to Primary Wave for $7 million. At the time, the estate was making $1.5 million per year, but after a series of brand deals, that’s up to $8 million annually as of 2024. A sync deal to get a song into a commercial ($50,000 to $1 million) or a movie ($10,000 to $500,000) can go a long way, but a whole movie is even better: When Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody came out in December 2022, the following year catalog streams were up 25 percent.

Ashley Carman, Bloomberg

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