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Post by Russg on Dec 14, 2017 23:23:16 GMT
Michael Jackson Estate, Sony Music Extend Partnership for Recordings 12/14/2017 by Ed Christmas
Sony will partner with the Jackson estate to "find new innovative ways to make Michael's music available to future generations of fans."
The Michael Jackson estate has signed a contract extending its relationship with Sony Music as the Jackson economic juggernaut continues to generate tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue.
Even in a time of declining sales, the songs of Jackson, who died June 25, 2009, still generates over a million track downloads a year for the last three years running, while his album catalog still moves over 500,000 units annually. Moving over to streaming, so far this year's Jackson music has been played 1.05 billion times, of which 443 million were audio streams and 608 million were video streams. Since Nielsen Music began tracking streaming, Jackson's music has generated 3.1 billion streams, 1.2 billion in audio and 1.9 million in video. The audio streams alone translate into nearly 800,000 album consumption units.
The signing not only continues a nearly 40-year relationship since Jackson released his Epic debut, Off the Wall in 1979, but also extends the landmark deal signed with the estate after the singer's death in 2010 that provided for the estate to reach up to $250 million in advances and other payments for about 10 recordings. Since then, four albums have been released, Michael, Immortal, Escape, and Scream which combined have scanned 1.29 million units; this is on top of the 1.8 million units that 2009's This Is It has generated since its release.
"Michael Jackson was an unsurpassed genius and an iconic force in music entertainment," Sony Music CEO Rob Stringer said in a statement. "The music -- and videos -- he made as an artist as part of the Sony Music family are essential to pop culture history. We're proud to be part of that history, and to find new innovative ways to make Michael's music available to future generations of fans."
As part of the deal, Sony will partner on additional projects that the estate may produce during the term of the agreement. While terms of the deal, including its valuation, were undisclosed, sources say it's for another seven years. While the additional projects werenโt spelled out, they likely would include the additional six albums implied by the original 10-album contract.
"We couldn't ask for more creative and innovative partners than Sony and Rob Stringer (whose history working personally with Michael goes back to the 1990s)," the Jackson estate executors John Branca and John McClain said in a combined statement. "Michael continues to inspire generations of artists who have come after him and attract new fans who understand that his music and message are more important than ever. We look forward to continuing to preserve and develop his remarkable musical legacy with Sony."
Other projects that have been issued through Sony since the singer's passing include the production of two documentaries directed by Spike Lee: Bad 25 and Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall; a crowd sourced music video for "Behind the Mask" (2010), the first Twitter music video premiere for "A Place With No Name" (2014) and an augmented reality campaign for Scream (2017), according to the announcement on the new deal with Sony.
But beyond those projects, the Jackson estate also cut other deals on its own, like the one it did with Cirque Du Soleil for the โOneโ tribute tour, which also benefited Sony Music as a licensee. In the future, those type of deals may provide an avenue for Sony to participate beyond licensing, sources suggest.
Also according to that announcement, "the last seven years of the creative partnership between Sony and the Estate have been characterized by the same kind of record-setting achievements that Michael realized during his lifetime. His recordings continue to meet new sales benchmarks with Thriller [becoming] the first and only album in RIAA history to pass the triple Diamond mark with a 33X platinum certification; Bad also achieved Diamond status. Jackson's latest release, the compilation album, Scream, was his 16th Billboard Top 40 Album and 30th charting album and its release kicked off the worldwide, first annual Michael Jackson Halloween campaign."
The announcement further noted that Jackson "ranks in the top five of all catalog artists for both audio streaming and video streaming for 2017, as well as in the top 5 of all artists for the combined audio and video streaming for 2013 โ 2017."
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Post by mjjfan810 on Dec 15, 2017 4:06:41 GMT
Not surprising.
Wake me up when they work together on something that hasn't already been released five times.
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TonyR
The Legend Continues
Posts: 8,423
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Post by TonyR on Dec 15, 2017 6:13:42 GMT
Not surprising. Wake me up when they work together on something that hasn't already been released five times. Like the Bad Tour. Or the Bad bonus tracks. Or some of the Michael songs. Or most of the Xscape music.
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Post by jaywonder on Dec 15, 2017 8:09:59 GMT
Not surprising although I somewhat hoped they'd work out a deal with a label like Concorde or Universal
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Post by MattyJam on Dec 15, 2017 9:04:54 GMT
Not surprising. Wake me up when they work together on something that hasn't already been released five times. Like the Bad Tour. Or the Bad bonus tracks. Or some of the Michael songs. Or most of the Xscape music. Yes, but I think the sentiment that is being expressed by some fans is:
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TonyR
The Legend Continues
Posts: 8,423
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Post by TonyR on Dec 15, 2017 9:17:40 GMT
Nice gif!
Yeah, but for me that's like saying I used to get pocket money off my Granddad and since he died I get fuck all.
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Post by MattyJam on Dec 15, 2017 9:22:29 GMT
Nice gif! Yeah, but for me that's like saying I used to get pocket money off my Granddad and since he died I get fuck all. To be honest, it was just an excuse for me to post that gif! But now you mention it, my Granddad's been strangely tight with birthdays and Christmases since he died.
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Post by mjjfan810 on Dec 15, 2017 9:45:35 GMT
Not surprising. Wake me up when they work together on something that hasn't already been released five times. Like the Bad Tour. Or the Bad bonus tracks. Or some of the Michael songs. Or most of the Xscape music. No, I meant more like:
OTW with free chalk
Scream
Immortal Cirque De Soleil soundtrack
This Is It soundtrack
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TonyR
The Legend Continues
Posts: 8,423
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Post by TonyR on Dec 15, 2017 9:52:44 GMT
Like the Bad Tour. Or the Bad bonus tracks. Or some of the Michael songs. Or most of the Xscape music. No, I meant more like:
OTW with free chalk
Scream
Immortal Cirque De Soleil soundtrack
This Is It soundtrack
So 50/50 then.
Glass half full or glass half empty?
Personally I'm immensley grateful for the great stuff we did get & understand that no-one's dragging me down the shops to buy OTW with free chalk or the Scream album.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 15, 2017 10:26:13 GMT
I don't know what it would take to get me excited about any new MJ project, so I'm lukewarm about this. Sony was MJ's home, but has been very underwhelming for the bigger fan.
Meh.
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Post by HIStoric on Dec 15, 2017 11:31:51 GMT
No, I meant more like:
OTW with free chalk
Scream
Immortal Cirque De Soleil soundtrack
This Is It soundtrack
At least with Immortal it presented many of Michael's songs in new and exciting ways. I particularly liked Dancing Machine/Blame it on the Boogie, TPH/SC/Dangerous, Is It Scary/Threatened/Thriller, TDCAU and some of the Immortal Megamix. Some cool mash ups and even glimpses of unreleased material, like the choir in TDCAU. Also with the TII soundtrack, we got two mixes of a newly finished unreleased song, a handful of new demos and a spoken poem. Good and reasonable amount of material given he had only been gone for 4 months by that point. I have to give it to the Estate that even if some releases have been orientated at newcomers (Disc 1 of TII, Scream), almost every package has offered at least something new to hardcore fans.
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Post by HIStoric on Dec 15, 2017 11:33:24 GMT
I don't know what it would take to get me excited about any new MJ project, so I'm lukewarm about this. Sony was MJ's home, but has been very underwhelming for the bigger fan. Meh. Did you get excited for XSCAPE? I think Michael, Xscape and Bad 25 have really only been the times I've been genuinely excited and counting down the days until a release - probably because of the new music. In fact Xscape was a highlight for me, they really put more effort into the promotion of the album and I really loved what was on the album too. I only became a fan just over a year before he died so for me it was the closest thing to an actual Michael Jackson album launch...
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Post by Deleted on Dec 15, 2017 11:41:10 GMT
I don't know what it would take to get me excited about any new MJ project, so I'm lukewarm about this. Sony was MJ's home, but has been very underwhelming for the bigger fan. Meh. Did you get excited for XSCAPE? I think Michael, Xscape and Bad 25 have really only been the times I've been genuinely excited and counting down the days until a release - probably because of the new music. In fact Xscape was a highlight for me, they really put more effort into the promotion of the album and I really loved what was on the album too. I only became a fan just over a year before he died so for me it was the closest thing to an actual Michael Jackson album launch... Immortal, Michael and Bad25 I got excited for. I'll never get excited for an album of new material again because after Michael (for obvious reasons) but also because whatever it is will be bastardised. Give us the short films in HD, new concerts, audio shows, re-releases of albums with added material, re-master Invincible, some new masters for pressing of vinyl would be nice, instead of taking the 2001 masters for the recent ones. Give us Ghosts. Give us the extended version of Dangerous with the unreleased disc we all have, new notes, photos. Give us a Victory Tour. Give us Yokohama in HD. Give us Victory and State of Shock with Freddie Mercury. State of Shock barely needs to be touched! The demo sounds fine! There has to be others out there like that.
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Post by HIStoric on Dec 15, 2017 12:05:13 GMT
Give us Victory and State of Shock with Freddie Mercury. State of Shock barely needs to be touched! The demo sounds fine! There has to be others out there like that. Agreed. Honestly I was hoping for an EP with their songs tbh. The TMBMTLTT mix we got in 2014 was sad to be honest and judging from the way Brian May and Roger Taylor spoke, it seemed the Estate were at fault for what we got there. They say there's a better version they worked on but the Estate didn't approve it or something.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 15, 2017 12:29:41 GMT
Give us Victory and State of Shock with Freddie Mercury. State of Shock barely needs to be touched! The demo sounds fine! There has to be others out there like that. Agreed. Honestly I was hoping for an EP with their songs tbh. The TMBMTLTT mix we got in 2014 was sad to be honest and judging from the way Brian May and Roger Taylor spoke, it seemed the Estate were at fault for what we got there. They say there's a better version they worked on but the Estate didn't approve it or something. That was the final nail in the coffin for me. The estate insisted on William Orbit. As if Brian May and Roger Taylor dont know how to produce a song. This is allegedly their mix. Which is gorgeous. The WIlliam Orbit mix is terribly mastered, has terrible unlistenable noise at the end of Brians solo, Michael is way too loud in the last verse, sounds like a quickly thrown together demo. The biggest disappointment for me (aside of the fake vocals on Michael).
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