It is now a cliche but here is a case showing that is true: it has turned out true that Michael Jackson’s death was a great career move:
Even in death, Michael Jackson remains the King of Pop. Less than a year after his shocking passing, the administrators of the late pop icon’s estate have signed the biggest recording contract in music history, a deal that the Los Angeles Times speculated could be worth up to $250 million and include unreleased recordings, DVDs and video games.
The seven-year deal with Jackson’s longtime home, Sony Music Entertainment, could cover up to 10 new Jackson projects, though no specific releases were announced on Monday. “We and Sony feel that the future for Michael Jackson is unlimited,” said John Branca, a special administrator for the estate. In a testament to his enduring appeal, the Jackson deal eclipses a number of mega-deals signed by contemporary acts, including Bruce Springsteen’s $110 million deal with Columbia Records in 2005 and Robbie Williams’ $150 million pact with EMI in 2002.
According to an anonymous source with knowledge of Jackson’s financial dealings, in the nine months since his death the singer has sold more than 31 million albums at a time when the music industry continues a decade-long album sales slide. In fact, the combination of those sales and other licensing deals cut by Branca have brought in close to $250 million to the estate, which has helped to ease the burden of the nearly $500 million in debt Jackson owed at the time of his death.
Rob Stringer, the chairman of Columbia Epic Records, the Sony division that will likely handle the releases, said the recordings will “span across different projects. There may be theater. There may be films and movies. There may be computer games — or multimedia platforms that I don’t know about today that will happen in 2015.”
The bottom line is that in death some of the hubris and perceived hubris that hampered Jackson as a top artist have fallen away in the year since his death. His music and artisty is what is replayed in the audio, televised, print and cyberspace media. And, like Elvis, he has found a second career as people focus less on the tabloid aspects of his life and more on the talent that propelled him to be of interest to the tabloids.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.