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.