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Baffled by SONY's approach

Chris_Jones

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For some weeks I've been trying to figure out why SONY would go to such lengths to aquire the rights to Michaels music, the expenses included, then take the most lazy, lathargic approach to promoting the recent album release!?

Pathetic springs to mind, but why!? They had a chance to REALLY make something of this financially - Instead they rush what can only be described as a 'pi$$ poor' website, throw a badly encoded track at it then............ well nothing.
 
Maybe Sony didn't aquire only the rights for Michael's music but they aquired his catalog as well? I don't know. Because indeed they gave a lot of money for projects that they aren't supporting at all.
 
drewhiggins said:
They must have degrees in hype but dropped out of promotions class.
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Thing I don't understand is why they would miss such a massive chance to rake some serious profits in. With the Internet the way it is today advertising would have been simple, Hell they could have even gone down the viral route and created a music video of some type - maybe something similar to the tribute get togethers staged last year!

SONY, your mentality baffles me!
 
That's it....It baffles me too...WTF Sony?! :bugeyed....Could have been HUGE..
 
yeah i totally agree
i wonder who they've got working over at sony , it really does confuse me as well thinking about how us fans could have thought of a much better approach yet SONY is a huge corporation and could not do anything with this album. Im starting to wonder , is it a conspiracy? because honestly its just unbelievable how they couldn't do a better job at this. Its like someone giving you a million dollars worth of gold but all you could sell it for was 100 dollars.
 
May be, contrary to fans' anticipation, Sony has no intention to make the album a blockbuster. May be Sony doesn't want to take risk. Sony may not want to invest more money in the overheads. Knowing how strong the brand Michael Jackson is globally, Sony knows Michael's core fan base would turn up and support the album; hence, the album will make a profit with minimal promotional budget.

Based on the worldwide performance of the album thus far, Sony is doing okay. Keep in mind, the production cost of this album is relatively low. The demos are all recorded and the songs are stored in the vault. No hours and hours of recording sessions were needed. Which other artist can give Sony a better chance of profitability? Very few. Sony doesn't need to spend money on promoting Michael Jackson for Michael Jackson is alreay such a well known brand. Sony doesn't need to incur high production cost neither.

Michael Jackson is like a blue-chip stock. Low risk and good value.

Then, why Sony would pay $250 million for the deal if it doesn't want to make huge profit? I guess it's mostly for Michael's iconic back catalog. Songs like Billie Jean are much more valuable than Hollywood Tonight. Of course, fans want unreleased materials because we own everything Michael released and we want something we have never heard of before. But, to the general audience, unreleased materials mean outtakes, incomplete songs. They may perceive outtakes as songs that are not good enough to make the album; hence, interest level is not as high.

Just my two cents...
 
I also wonder that sometimes..

love is magical said:
May be, contrary to fans' anticipation, Sony has no intention to make the album a blockbuster. May be Sony doesn't want to take risk. Sony may not want to invest more money in the overheads. Knowing how strong the brand Michael Jackson is globally, Sony knows Michael's core fan base would turn up and support the album; hence, the album will make a profit with minimal promotional budget.

Based on the worldwide performance of the album thus far, Sony is doing okay. Keep in mind, the production cost of this album is relatively low. The demos are all recorded and the songs are stored in the vault. No hours and hours of recording sessions were needed. Which other artist can give Sony a better chance of profitability? Very few. Sony doesn't need to spend money on promoting Michael Jackson for Michael Jackson is alreay such a well known brand. Sony doesn't need to incur high production cost neither.

Michael Jackson is like a blue-chip stock. Low risk and good value.

Then, why Sony would pay $250 million for the deal if it doesn't want to make huge profit? I guess it's mostly for Michael's iconic back catalog. Songs like Billie Jean are much more valuable than Hollywood Tonight. Of course, fans want unreleased materials because we own everything Michael released and we want something we have never heard of before. But, to the general audience, unreleased materials mean outtakes, incomplete songs. They may perceive outtakes as songs that are not good enough to make the album; hence, interest level is not as high.

Just my two cents...
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That's a good point! But still, I don't quite get why they wouldn't want to make as much money as possible..
 
The One. said:
I also wonder that sometimes..


That's a good point! But still, I don't quite get why they wouldn't want to make as much money as possible..
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First, higher return involves higer risk, i.e. Sony needs to spend more money on marketing and promotion in order to create buzz. But, it's no guarantee that the higher overhead costs will generate higher return.

Second, it's challenging to change people's view on posthumous release. Generally speaking, people associate posthumous release as second rated.

Sony may just want to play safe, diversify the good materails in several releases and focus on the iconic back catalog.

Again, just my :2cents:. Who in this earth knows what Sony is truly thinking?
 
I haven't even seen one commercial on TV for this thing. Quite surprising for heartless capitalists like $ony. They don't even have much going in the way of merch to promote the thing--the only thing I've seen is a lousy tee shirt. You'd think for all the trouble they've gone through, that they would at least deliver a good propaganda campaign to drive the album home, but no. Not only have they really botched it by casting doubt as to the authenticity of some material, but they won't even promote the rest. If they couldn't do it right from the start, well, they shouldn't have.
 
The approach Sony have taken to "Michael" is sort of, "Sell to MJ fans but ignore major sales"...........


And on top of that the inclusion of Cascio songs mean that the album will only sell to half of the MJ fanbase and nobody else........


And when it couldn't get any worse, the album itself isn't even that good when compared to most of the recent leaked songs........


Maximum sales of Michael will be 4 million......


"Michael" the album is an Epic Fail!!!!!.....aka MJ's worst album!!!!!

And both Sony and Estate are to blame......
 
Yes, this has me completely puzzled, too. I do wish that some other company had gotten the rights to Michael's music. It all just seems too convenient. Michael wants to get away from Sony. But after his sudden death, they acquire the rights to TII, his back catalog, and a bunch of new projects. I am starting to think conspiracy, and I never used to think that way. Makes me wonder about those that struck the deals.
 
I would assume that Michael would hide his music in a way that sony may never be able to touch it. This is a guy who used three limousines to deliver ONE demo CD. The demo CD was wrapped extensively in plastic wrap and sat in the middle limo, with another limo in front, and behind for extra protection.

With his music Michael said he literally makes 100-200 songs for every album he makes. He had so many songs that he told sony in a careless tone, "I can just give them any two songs, really."

And here's sony searching for songs saying they only have enough good ones for one or two more albums. And when Michael was here, he said he can just pick any two songs.

Remember what Randy said, BEFORE the family could even begin to grieve for Michael's passing, EVERYONE was already pushing documents and papers at them.
 
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Maybe they're not pushing it because they think it's´just not that good. I mean, Blue gangster is much better in all sense than anything on the album. It puzzles me why that song is not on the album. Lame production and some ridiculous song performance (e.g monster, oh that vibrato makes it impossible to listen to it, even if it's not that good song either). They f.u.ck.ed. that up real nice.
 
Krshna28 said:
The approach Sony have taken to "Michael" is sort of, "Sell to MJ fans but ignore major sales"...........


And on top of that the inclusion of Cascio songs mean that the album will only sell to half of the MJ fanbase and nobody else........


And when it couldn't get any worse, the album itself isn't even that good when compared to most of the recent leaked songs........


Maximum sales of Michael will be 4 million......


"Michael" the album is an Epic Fail!!!!!.....aka MJ's worst album!!!!!

And both Sony and Estate are to blame......
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I couldn't disagree more with your assessment of "Michael". I think it's a very well done album, given the circumstances. Actually, if Michael were still alive and released this album... I would still be very pleased with it. It has really great tracks and I appreciate the short track listing because unlike MJ's last album, it doesn't suffer fatigue from too many tracks and lack of flow.

Sony messed up by not promoting this album but it still won't hurt MJ's legacy. That's unbreakable. And it's still gonna sell, just not as much as it could have.
 
kasume said:
I would assume that Michael would hide his music in a way that sony may never be able to touch it. This is a guy who used three limousines to deliver ONE demo CD. The demo CD was wrapped extensively in plastic wrap and sat in the middle limo, with another limo in front, and behind for extra protection.

With his music Michael said he literally makes 100-200 songs for every album he makes. He had so many songs that he told sony in a careless tone, "I can just give them any two songs, really."

And here's sony searching for songs saying they only have enough good ones for one or two more albums. And when Michael was here, he said he can just pick any two songs.

Remember what Randy said, BEFORE the family could even begin to grieve for Michael's passing, EVERYONE was already pushing documents and papers at them.
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Yeah, i mean he stated once i'm sure that his children would earn alot of money from those unreleased songs, and that there was plenty of great material. Every little leak of some random song like STTR seems to support this, he obviously recorded full vocals for these old album contenders, because some were on final tracklisting until the last minute. It's so suspicious that they claim there is hardly anything.
 
It is so sad.

Michael contains 6 SUPERB MJ songs. Perfect in many ways actually! (and 4 great songs. - 3 of them very controversal :()

And Michael could have been a smash hit, a #1 in US and UK - and many more countries! The material is great.
We all knew MJ would not be here to help promote the album - SONY TOO!! - so this album needed/needs more promotion to sell great than previously released albums! But SONY did not do that - why I will never understand. But I am disappointed and sad.
Michael deserved better than this!
 
Hess said:
It is so sad.

Michael contains 6 SUPERB MJ songs. Perfect in many ways actually! (and 4 great songs. - 3 of them very controversal :()

And Michael could have been a smash hit, a #1 in US and UK - and many more countries! The material is great.
We all knew MJ would not be here to help promote the album - SONY TOO!! - so this album needed/needs more promotion to sell great than previously released albums! But SONY did not do that - why I will never understand. But I am disappointed and sad.
Michael deserved better than this!
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:agree:Thats my opinion too.:(:doh: Sony....
 
Travis said:
I couldn't disagree more with your assessment of "Michael". I think it's a very well done album, given the circumstances. Actually, if Michael were still alive and released this album... I would still be very pleased with it. It has really great tracks and I appreciate the short track listing because unlike MJ's last album, it doesn't suffer fatigue from too many tracks and lack of flow.

Sony messed up by not promoting this album but it still won't hurt MJ's legacy. That's unbreakable. And it's still gonna sell, just not as much as it could have.
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Michael always loved to put loads of tracks on his albums..........the only short albums are the Quincy Jones ones but they were originally released on LP (less songs = better sound quality)........and the CD version of Bad even came with an extra song!!!!!!!


Anyway......

My personal opinion is that leaked songs (like "Place with no name", "Do you know where your children are", "Blue Gangsta" and "Slave to the rhythm") all sound better then the stuff in "Michael"!!!!
 
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