Michael Jackson As A Product Music Essay

Michael capital of Mississippi As A Product Music EssayMichael capital of Mississippi was born at Gray , Indiana in 1958 to an African-American couple, Joseph Walter capital of Mississippi and Katherine Esther Scruse. Though Michael had a real troubled relationship with his father at very primal stages of his life, being born into a family with a melodyal background has contributed to the elevation of Michael into becoming the big businessman of Pop. His career started as early as at the age of 5.In 1963, he was part of Jackson 5, a band that consisted of his four other brothers. Although at initial stages the band entertained their local surroundings, it captured a professional interest in 1968 when it signed a contract to Motown Records. By 1970, the group has gained enormous popularity and has exceed melody charts with hits such(prenominal) as Ill Be There, I want You Back, ABC and a some others. Michael has done four solo hits at this clock time. His solo Ben stood number one on the charts. After triad glorious familys, the gross sales started to decline forcing the Jacksons to leave Motown in 1975. Later that year, renaming the band as The Jacksons, they signed to heroic poem Records.Soon, Michaels outstanding performances and natural talent set him apart from the rest and made him central focus (Telegraph, 2009). building on the relationship with producer Quincy Jones, formed at the time of acting in his melodyal moving picture The Wiz, Michael has released Off the Wall jointly produced by Jones. Off the Wall gene investd four US top decennary hits, obtained number three on the billboard 200, exchange over 20 million copies globally, and fetched various reputable awards from American, Billboard and Grammy. This album has said to provoke brought 37% of wholesale album profits, the highest ever royalty rate in the music diligence (USA Today, 2009). However, the best is yet to come.In 1982, the music business solid ground has witnessed an unheralded storm with the release of his Thriller. It has won him 8 of the 12 nominated Grammy awards, spent 122 weeks on the Billboard 200, sold over 50 million copies globally, and has since then remained the best selling album ever. However, the albums success cant be measured by sales alone, says Mitchell and Newman (2009), as Jackson moonwalked his way into history of music, Thriller set a advanced benchmark for blockbusters that changed how the music business promoted and marketed superstar releases. It also changed MTV, she continues, breaking down the cable netwhole kit and boodle racial barriers and ski tow the bar for video quality.Amidst the turmoil in music business at that time, he was described as a one man rescue team for the music business (Corliss, 2009). It exposed Michael as telephone call writer, singer and dancer. Later that year, his fame reached further heights with the dis constrictive of his signature Moonwalk live on Motowns 25Yesterday, Today, alw ays television face.The period between 1984 and 1992 has showcased Michaels business acumen. During this time he purchased Beatles back catalogue for $47 million, construct Neverland ranch, founded Heal the World to aid children and environment, wrote a biography titled moonwalk, cause marketed to raise the funds for the poor people in Africa and signed $1 billion 15 year contract with Sony. The Beatles purchase proved to be a great business break away which guaranteed him millions of dollars of income forever (Strauss, 1996). In him was a wise investor, marketing protagonist but a shopping spree. However, at this time, the interest in business did not affect his music career as he released two albums, Bad and Dangerous. Although, the albums were not in race with Thriller, they kept him a float.But up to now as Jackson grew richer and more successful observes Leung (2005), his individualised life took a unusual turn his face, his colour, his sex, his outfits, his marriage, an d his lifestyle. And further, she opines, as the media zoomed in, he began to look more like a circus side show than a musical superstar.The much adored and worshiped innocent image of Michael has began to show up cracks in the early part of 1993, when a 13 year old impeach him of child abuse at his Neverland. Although he denied the accusation, he reportedly settled it outside of court for $20 million causing suspicions (Independent, 2009). This was just a glimpse of legion(predicate) rumours and accusations to befall. Soon, Michaels image has begun to be questioned from every nook and corner and was surrounded by controversiesFrom bodily transformation to song writing, from being hook up with to becoming father of surrogate mother born child, from light beam pan utopian ideas to adopting a chimp, from not exposing his children in front of media to dangling his third child chimneypiece out of balcony, from his new business contracts to his financial bankruptcy, from attending a Grammy ceremony on triple find to showing in court wearing pyjamas, and from label disputes to taking painkillers or drugs every single move of him was under constant monitoring and was consistently linked to controversies.Acquisitions of physical transformation include plastic surgeries and bleaching. The pretend change of sex and colour has given a room from many a(prenominal) moral and ethical allegations. The accused self-induced change from black to white has been reported as betrayal of black community (Topping, 2009).Although, Michael has responded with clarifications about the spit out disease he posses and mental and physical turmoil he went through in his child jacket (to argue his innocent love for children) in the famous interview of Opera Winfrey and by writing songs such as It does not matter if you are Black or White, they did not yield any results. In the surge of these allegations, his marriage to Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of Elvis Presley was surprisi ng to many. However, the marriage was short lived. He then married for the stand by time, a nurse material bodyd Debbie Rowe in 1996. The couple had two children- son, Prince Michael Jackson in 1997 and daughter, Paris Michael Jackson in 1998. The second marriage was also resulted in divorce in 1999. A year later, Michael had a third child, speculated to be born of a surrogate mother.Amidst this personal life turmoil, not so amazingly the 1990s have been barren in terms of musical revenue. Though the release of the best selling remix album ever Blood on the Dance Floor HIStory in the Mix, the Dangerous world tour, a few charity events, a couple of shows celebrating his 30th anniversary and most acclaimed half time performance of Super Bowl XXVII have looked to rejuvenate his image, dangling his third child out of third floor balcony in 2002, the British journalist, Martin Bashirs documentary, Living with Michael Jackson, (in which the pop icon reportedly told that he share bed wi th young children) in 2003, the second child abuse allegations, and following the pop stars capture in 2004 based on these and many other relative allegations have further fueled the outrage (Rolling Stone, 2009). Ironically, in the following year Michael was acquitted of all these charges. In 2006, his Neverland ranch was closed due to labour disputes and he moved to Bahrain to start a new. However, the controversies have never left him as he entered into dispute with force of Bahrain on several matters.As a late surge in the declining stage of his career, he and AEG, the music promoter, announced a surprise comeback to take place on 11th of July 2009. However, Michael goes into cardiac arrest and dies at the age of 50. Even in death the controversies did not desert him as there were many speculations on how he died.In the vocabulary of Product Life Cycle (PLC), beginning in 1963 up until 1978, Michael was in introduction stage, where he was a part of a group. He created awarenes s among music industry with his electric and outstanding performances. His stand alone performances from the group have served as trail before the true(a) solos at a later stage. Although being a part of group, he built a name for himself among music producers and customers.From 1978, with scarecrow role in the musical movie The Wiz has entered into Growth stage. Teaming up with Quincy Jones, the producer, he has extended his image to new markets. With albums like Thriller, performances like Moonwalk, endorsements contracts like Pepsi, and cause marketing and charity works like We are the World profits and sales have seen an unbelievable growth. All due to the ameliorate quality, styling and added new value attributes to the music. And, thus, he was able to open up entirely anew distribution channels. The plan of music video genre, improved quality of the same, lip-syncing to pre-recorded voice in live performances and access to a whole new distribution channel in the form of MTV are a few of the many examples.The year 1986 has seen the start of Maturity stage. The sales and profits have reached to such a peak stage that, even the commercial success of Bad with over 30 million copy sales worldwide were considered lower. With the controversies regarding personal life beginning to creep into musical career the rate of sales growth slowed down.With the emergence of numerous controversies coupled with customers churn and competition, the early part of 1990s have seen the beginning of the end-the decline stage. The changes in his music videos with construction of sexual and violent natured images did not suit many customer preferences. The banning of In the mechanical press in South Africa is a proof of the same. In the beginning of 2009, Michael calling it a final supply call planned to perform 50 concerts (which saw a record breaking ticket sales and estimated to make close to $100m) but has met with his untimely death.So, Michael Jackson as a product (or ma rketing offering) has a similar life cycle to that of many others. However, what seems unique to him is the reincarnation or another cycle later on its death-Product Death Cycle (PDC).Buried under huge financial debts for most part of his life, Michaels piddleings have grown by millions after his death. Under various film, contract and merchandising deals, he has earned close to $200 million by the end of the year (Arango, 2009). Even beyond 2009, he is expected to earn close to 100 million per annum. For the man who left mark on over a 6 billion people, the Neverland and many other places on his name could be money generating machines for eternity from the tourists.The commercial reincarnation after his death can be witnessed in almost everything-the physical and online retail outlets, the Billboard charts, radios, TV shows, internet and the like. As the digital music listeners fell back to CDs, over 422,000 copies of his albums were sold in the second week after his death, 40 ti mes higher than the first one (Deprez, 2009). As per online, he notes, the shares of Apple, virago and eBay rose more than 2%, 1.3% and 0.64% respectively and expected to be long lasting. According to Silvio Pietroluongo , the Billboard director of charts, the level of dominance by Michael Jackson on the top pop catalogue albums chart is contradictory anything one has ever seen on any Billboard chart, regardless if it occurred pre or post death (Smith, 2009).Michael Jackson exceed the search list of all the major search engines for the year including Google, Yahoo and Bing (Michael Jackson, 2009). Britney Spears, whose name topped the yahoo search for past four years has been wiped out within an hour of his death as millions of users poured into it in no time (FD Wire, 2009). His music and videos became ubiquitous on the radios, iPods, MP3 players, televisions and internet (Sisario, 2009). As Barker (2009) puts it, his commemorative products and memorabilia are like the stimulus p ackage 3 in the midst of global recession.In the contemporary capitalistic world, death of a few popular celebrities has always transformed into brilliant business opportunities (Porter, 2009). However, in the case of Michael Jackson, the opportunities in generating sale in death as in life are on the whole at par. Its not a day or a week affair it is here to preventative longer and thus might need another cycle.