I had fairly forgotten that the late Michael Jackson owned the rights to The Beatles catalog of songs. Apparently Jackson & Sony owned and/or administered the rights of a host of other people's compositions as well. With Jackson's sudden death & his massive debt, the ownership of these compositions is up in the air now. Fortunately, it's not just simple ownership, there are trusts & licensing & partnerships involved. The compositions were also used as collateral for loans. The roaches will be coming out of the woodwork for claims to Jackson's estate and money oriented financial types will be slavering to get their meathooks onto those songs. The bragging rights at the club would be outrageous.
Jackson was never high on my list of musicians but I think I like the idea of a real musician owning this intellectual property more than just some investor type.
Regardless, we will probably be hearing about his estate & wild claims to it for some years to come.
As anybody who has lost a parent knows, a simple uncontested estate can result in weird shit popping up for years. With a popular, wealthy, eccentric person like Jackson, the sky is the limit. This could bring out more weird-ohs than Howard Hughes ever did.
Reuters story here.
1 comment:
Heads up, Michael Jackson might have faked his death. I have the video, taped from an early morning CNN broadcast (which has not since been repeated) that purports to prove it.
If this is true, this is big.
Post a Comment