3 Unexpected Economic Effects of Michael Jackson’s Death

Artwork by Raouldraws

Back in the day, I guess I was as much of a Michael Jackson fan as any tween growing up in a lily white suburb of LA: I never had a sparkly glove, or a miniature photo button to put on my backpack, or that red leather jacket with all the zippers. But, I do remember skating to his music during birthday parties at Skating Plus, and I remember watching the Thriller videos in the heyday of MTV. While I cannot say I profoundly affected by Michael Jackson’s death, seeing all of those clips of him as a young child singing with the Jackson 5 did make me stop and think about how tragic his life ended up, and just how uncomfortable in his own skin he must have been to transform himself from that cute kid into the strange looking adult with whom I am more familiar. The other observations I’ve been making over the last week are the effects on the market and other aspects of the economy that his death has had, which brings me to today’s list.

1. If Michael Jackson’s death can break the internet, what will we do when there’s a global meltdown for reals? Unless you have been hiding under a rock, you must have read several articles about how news of Michael Jackson’s death managed to crash the websites for the LA Times, Twitter, CNN, TMZ, and (god help us) Perez Hilton, and probably others too numerous to list here. What does this mean, other than a buttload of people are dicking around on the internet when they’re supposed to be working? Well, if there’s a real emergency someday on a global scale, our current internet resources are clearly not equipped to deal with them. Ideally, if the internet is working how it was planned to work, the servers carrying all this information should be able to adjust to huge changes in traffic without much notice. Clearly, we’re not quite there yet.
2. Even a millionaire (billionaire?) needs a budget. At the height of his career, Michael Jackson controlled every aspect of his musical career and earned a higher royalty rate than “any any single person has ever taken away from the music business.” This is what allowed him to buy ATV Music, the company that controlled the Beatles’ publishing. Over the years, Jackson lost money as a result of various lawsuits and had to pay out settlements to make allegations of child molestation go away, and the staffing of his Neverland ranch cost $5 million a year just to staff. But, bottom line, Michael Jackson was spending about $10 million to $20 million a year more than he was bringing in towards the end. It’s tough for most of us to understand how this is possible, but it illustrates the point that most people tend to spend most of the money they make, regardless of how much that is. And as his experience shows, you are never to rich to need a budget.
3. Jackson’s debt-ridden estate might just be saved by an unexpected run on iTunes. If you’ve been paying attention to iTunes the past few days, you’ll note that nearly all of the best selling albums and songs are either by Michael Jackson or the Jackson 5. This goes for almost every genre into which Michael Jackson’s music can fit by any stretch of the imagination–pop, r&b, Apparently, Michael Jackson dead amounts to what appears to be a perfect storm of iTunes demand. If you consider that most people who liked Jackson’s music back in the day don’t have any of it on CD, much less on their iPhones, then what you have is a huge amount of people suddenly reminded that “Smooth Criminal” might be a good addition to their workout mix. Seriously. I even had to cycle through two songs at spinning class tonight. I actually hope it continues, because those Jackson kids are going to need the extra money for therapy later, provided they can pry it all from their grandfather’s hands.

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