FICRY

Jeff Koons' Michael Jackson and Monkey

In death, Michael Jackson broke free from crippling debt and achieved the financial viability that eluded him for decades. His status as a cultural icon, in dispute as recently as one week ago, has been cemented by the havoc wreaked on the internet from the public’s outpouring. In true king of pop fashion, Jackson’s final performance turned into a media frenzy that overtook the web for days.

After his death was announced his songs shot to the top of Amazon and iTunes downloading charts. The Huffington Post maintains that magazines with Jackson on the cover will see record sales over the next few weeks; reviving, albeit temporarily, the ailing print industry. Furthermore, TMZ reported that the pop star’s death prompted a surge in internet traffic that caused some sites to crash (see chart and links below). Overnight, the ostrasized Jackson once again has come to dominate the media.

Accoring to Reuters, at the time of his death Jackson faced a personal financial crisis of fittingly kingsize proportions, with debts totaling more than $200 million. A forensic accountant assigned to Jackson’s case testified that “the singer had an ‘ongoing cash crisis’ and was spending $20 million to $30 million more per year than he earned.” Jackson maintained his lavish lifestyle by using his assets as collateral for massive loans. In 1995 he obtained $200 million in loans from Bank of America, debts from which are still outstanding. The most lucrative of Jackson’s assets are the Beatles’ catalog which he shared his stake in with Sony records. A source for Mail Online told reporters that Sony has been paying Micheal’s bills since crippling debts have prevented the singer from obtaining more loans.

Jackson was forced to sell-off his Neverland ranch last March in order to stay financially afloat, due to multiple unpaid mortgages on a house he purchased in Los Angeles for his family. In the midst of the foreclosure of his infamous ranch, Jackson borrowed tens of millions of dollars in assets and relied on the generosity of his wealthy friends. Sheik Abdulla bin Hamad Al Khalifa, son of the king of Bahrain, gave the struggling pop star millions of dollars and an estate in the Gulf, asking Jackson to record an album and write an autobiography. Though he lived on Khalifa’s money for a number of years, neither a book nor an album was produced. When Neverland faced foreclosure, billionaire real-estate CEO Thomas Barrack created a joint venture between his company Colony Capital LLC and Jackson. This saved Neverland from being sold at public auctioned piecemeal, which would have hummiliated Jackson, but commited the singer to touring in Europe in order to repay the debt.

According to Ian Helpern, the singer only agreed to ten performances at the O2 arena in London but when concert bookers felt the wave of money rush-in from ticket sales, they bumped-up the number of shows to a staggering 50. An aide told Helpern that ‘The vultures who were pulling his strings somehow managed to put this concert extravaganza together behind his back, then presented it to him as a fait accompli. When Jackson realized that an impossible task had been set before him he grew increasingly depressed. “We knew it was a disaster waiting to happen,” said one aide. Adding, “I don’t think anybody predicted it would actually kill him but nobody believed he would end up performing.” Jackson himself was quoted as saying “I don’t know how I’m going to do 50 shows. I’m not a big eater. I need to put some weight on. I’m really angry with them booking me up to do 50 shows. I only wanted to do ten.”

After hearing of Jackson’s death, AEG Live, the company promoting his tour, has made it clear ticket holders will receive refunds for their purchases. However, there is some debate over who is legally responsible to pay the £300 million pounds of production costs. A lawsuit between the tour’s producer and their entertainment insurer is already in the works.

Information about the internet’s reaction to Jackson’s death can be found below.

Web Surges and Crashes as Jackson Fans React

DataCenterKnowledge: Chart shows that “web creaks as Jackson fans mourn” web site response time grows, availability down (shown here)

TechCrunch: TMZ, which broke the story, crashed on its scoop boom; Perez Hilton also reportedly down

TMZ: “major web sites bombed by a tidal wave of traffic”

TechCrunch: Twitter disables search to accommodate surge

CNet: Google confirms “difficulty,” ABC News drops to 11% availability

Merc: Facebook: status updates surged

Billboard: Jackson music dominates iTunes, Amazon

Venture Beat: Decried the event as a wake-up call for the web. This is an indication of what would happen to the world wide web in a real emergency, the publication maintains, and we should be very concerned about the reliability of the internet in similar circumstances.

The Huffington Post reports that NBC Nightly News recorded 3.4 million video streams Thursday night, its most ever, and Yahoo! News set a record in unique visitors with 16.4 million in one day.