^^Respect, you should know me better that that
I most certainly did not say in my post that Xscape was a flop, nor do I think so. What I meant that I think it is too late to promote Xscape because the way todays albums seems to come and go faster than you could blink your eyes. If people didn't buy in the first few months of the release after the massive promo, what makes you think that people would buy now if they put out a video? That is the money bit what I meant. They can sink million and millions on promo stuff, but as videos can be seen freely on utube, and songs can be listened in various sites, it doesn't meant that those people who see video that they are going to iTunes or amazon to order Xscape.
I'm thinking of that Xscape has sold 1,489,000 (ww) so how much money they actually earned?
iTunes, Apple takes a 30% cut of every sale. The remaining 70% is split between MJ and record label record label, physical retailers take roughly 30% of the suggested retail price. Again, the remaining 70% is split between MJ and his record label. (this is actually how TS makes her money but I think it applies to other artists too).
After all the musicians, producers and every other single person involved of making Xscape gets paid and advertising is paid, and other costs, how much money if left to use more for promotion?
What ever you may think of hologram, it made MJ talk of the town (so to speak), and that is what count in the business. They needed to put Michael's name out there and make it big. Promo for Xscape in the first few months was massive, noone can deny that they didn't put money for promotion back then.
No matter what they did or do past, present or future, there is always fans that argue things could have been done differently, but those fans don't think the whole picture. Where do they take the money to pay promos and how they are going to promote, and don't tell me that according to Forbes, MJ earned 150 million? And what makes you think that 1 more video (good or bad) would make any difference in sales wise?
Record labels put more effort on artists that are available to do concert tours and promo stuff, but it is different with MJ. He cannot do anything.
Unfortunately we are going to have to measure success of Xscape against other deceased artist's posthumous release, and Xscape did extremely well in many ways. This album had lots of money put into promotion and had great sales to compare any other deceased artist in recent years.
