MJ’s musical legacy to fetch billion dollars posthumously

Washington: It has emerged that Michael Jackson’s musical estate, emerging as a ‘true legacy’, can fetch billion dollars in next several decades.

“Most experts say the Michael Jackson estate could earn in the range of a billion dollars over the course of the next several decades,” the CBS News quoted E! Chief News Correspondent Ken Baker as saying. To start with, the iconic jacket from ‘Thriller’, that is set to go up for auction, can fetch as much as 400,000 dollars. Last year even, an album of previously unreleased music, ‘Michael’, sold 3 million copies worldwide. “I still think it’s a quality figure, and a quality statement as to his enduring popularity and legacy,” said Billboard magazine’s Gail Mitchell. According to MJ’s “Early Show on Saturday Morning” co-anchor Russ Mitchell, when Jackson died, ‘nine of the top 10 downloaded songs were (his) right after his death’. “There was that explosion of all the interest and all the love that was allowed to come out after his passing,” said music journalist Alan Light. “It was nine of the top ten iTunes downloads and the entire top of the album chart in the aftermath. There was all of this attention in sales,” he said. “I think it’s clear that now the catalog is again part of the musical landscape in a way that, for the 10 or 12 years before his passing, it really hadn’t been,” he added. Going by all these accounts, no doubts can be cast on the expected inflow of money, something that the pop star desperately needed before he died, but could only manage to leave the world staying nearly a half-billion dollars in debt. ANI