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Michael Jackson's Estate Earned $783 Million Since His Death

By Boyce Watkins, PhD on Jun 21st 2010 2:50PM
Filed under: News

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Michael Jackson's Estate Has Earned $783 Million Since His Death
Since his sudden heart attack last year, Michael Jackson has raked in big money. In the last year, his estate has earned $783 million, exceeding even the most optimistic projections.

Most of the wealth was earned from his movie 'This is It,' as well as various publishing agreements, including deals to publish previously unreleased music.

Jackson also owned a 50 percent stake in the Sony/ATV music catalogue, which will generate $80 million by itself. His estate also stands to earn millions from CD, DVD and Blu-ray sales of his recently released feature film.

According to Rolling Stone, Jackson has sold 8.9 million CDs in the U.S. alone since he died. This Christmas, his estate plans to release another album. If the $783 million estimate of Jackson's earnings is correct, he has earned more than the haul of the top 10 richest dead celebrities combined during the year 2009.




The lessons to be learned from this are numerous:

1) Celebrities are not just people, they are also brands. A brand can earn money even if the person is not around.

2) Planning for the future of your children is critical. You should be able to leave them real wealth when you're gone. The only way to do that is by investing during life, not just earning income.

3) Michael Jackson was smarter than we thought. Usually, celebs are taken advantage of by the music industry and Jackson used the industry to his advantage.

4) Jackson is not really gone. He will have a greater presence in our lives during his death than he ever had in life.





Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and a Scholarship in Action resident of the Institute for Black Public Policy. To have Dr. Boyce's commentary delivered to your e-mail, please click here.

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