Special Administrators
for the Estate of Michael Jackson, John Branca and John McClain, and Sony Music
will continue the label’s 30-year relationship with Michael Jackson and his
music with a landmark recording deal, it was announced today.
With this new agreement, Sony Music’s
Columbia Epic Label Group and Legacy Recordings will continue their term of
rights to his catalog and also create new projects for Michael Jackson
featuring the never-before-released Jackson recordings. The first project
featuring unreleased music is expected for release in November 2010.
As a solo artist with Epic Records
spanning three decades, Michael has sold hundreds of millions of records
worldwide and released thirteen #1 singles. Jackson became one of a handful of
artists to be inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, won 13 Grammy
Awards and received the American Music Award’s Artist of the Century Award.
Sony’s Legacy Recordings has also created a number of successful projects such
as the “Thriller” 25th anniversary album. The best selling album of all time
worldwide by wide margin, “Thriller” showed the lasting power of Michael’s
music by returning to #1 on the weekly sales charts in 2008.
This past fall, Sony Music released the
#1 two-disc album companion to the motion picture Michael Jackson’s This
is It ” which has sold over 5 million copies worldwide. Released
by Sony Pictures, the film made history as the highest grossing concert film of
all time and the recently released DVD took the #1 spot in DVD sales, breaking
the record for first-week’s sales of a music film.