A tough week for the music industry. A quick Death Toll:

THE KING

With Michael, an era is gone. The ‘golden’ era of Super-Stars who can (could) move millions of hearts and dollars…

Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age has an entire chapter dedicated to Thriller, the album that saved record labels from crashing, back in 1982, when sales were drying out in the post-disco age.

The dialogue that follows is between the then-chairman of  CBS Records (then morphed into the now Sony Music Entertainment) and Michael Jackson.

So Yetnikoff pressured his biggest star. With just months left in 1982, he gave Jackson and producer Quincy Jones a deadline: Finish a new album, and make it a blockbuster, by Christmas. They weren’t happy about having to rush, but they obeyed and finished the final Thriller mixes in a month. They turned them in to Epic Records, for release just before Thanksgiving…

“I told you I’d do it,” Jackson told Yetnikoff.“I told you I’d outdo Off the Wall.”

Yetnikoff responded: “You delivered. You delivered like a motherfucker.”

Jackson: “Please don’t use that word, Walter.”

Yetnikoff: “You delivered like an angel. Archangel Michael.”

Jackson: “That’s better. Now will you promote it?”

Yetnikoff:”Like a motherfucker”

It was the right album at the right time: All seven of its singles landed in the Top 10, the album lasted a ridiculous thirty-seven weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard charts, and it went on to sell more than 51 million copies—the best-selling album in the world until the Eagles’ Their Greatest Hits surpassed it (in the United States, anyway) in 2000. Thriller singlehandedly rescued CBS from its late ’70s doldrums—the company’s net income jumped 26 percent in 1983, to $187 million—pushing fans back into record stores and propping up the industry.

So be it. The King is dead…but to put things in  perspective, of what kingdom are we talking about?

Umair Haque chimes in the post-mourning debate about how rich Michael Jackson and his heirs (potentially) was:

If the world’s biggest pop star only made $25 million a year in total, something’s very, very wrong. Where’s the rest of the money? Why can’t a resource as scarce as the King of Pop capture more value?

After all, that’s not even mega-rich.

The world’s top hedge fund “managers” regularly pull in hundreds of millions. That’s an order of magnitude difference.

—————

THE STORY-TELLER

Another day, another magazine folding. After Blender, today’s the turn of Vibe, the urban glossy founded in 1992 by legendary producer Quincy Jones.

—————-

THE PIRATES

The Pirate Bay isn’t dead yet, but the boat is sinking. Today Variety reported that Swedish video game company Global Gaming Factory X agreed to pay about $7.7 million to buy TPB.
Can a reformed PirateBay survive?