UFO Info Week-End

Regular versions of Jackson’s albums are going for $50 and $60 and these are titles that you couldn’t have sold the

Regular versions of Jackson’s albums are going for $50 and $60, and these are titles that you couldn’t have sold the day before his death for $3.”Amid all the hoopla, retailers tried to put Jackson’s death in perspective. “We cleared out some Jackson stuff that we thought we would never sell, like his old videos,” Mello says “Look at what’s going on at eBay. “The night it happened, we had a customer crying in the store,” Bryan recalls. “It’s a very emotional thing for a lot of people.”Newbury Comics’ Mello says demand has been strong for all manner of Jackson product. “Christmas,” he says, “is going to be about Michael Jackson.”Others aren’t convinced that the sales gains will be sustained through the end of the year but agree that they’ll last a while.

“Usually when an artist dies, the sales surge is over within two weeks, but for John Lennon and Elvis Presley sales went on for a while,” says the head of purchasing at a large music account. “I would put Jackson as bigger than Lennon.”Sue Bryan, the head of the music and video department at J&R Music in New York, also sees parallels with customer reaction to Lennon’s murder in 1980. Microsoft offered a free copy of the “Thriller” video to all Xbox 360 users, resulting in 50,000 downloads during the two days after his death.LIKE LENNON, BUT BIGGERThe Music Experience’s Jones says he thinks heightened interest in Jackson’s catalog will last for the rest of the year. “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” registered 800,000 views in the same time frame, followed by “Billie Jean” with 750,000 and “Thriller” with slightly more than 700,000.The online streaming music service Pandora says registered users created more than 500,000 custom radio stations featuring Jackson songs June 25-27. Virtually every major digital music service reported unprecedented spikes in volume and activity surrounding Jackson’s music as fans flocked online to pay their respects.On YouTube, Jackson’s music videos generated heavy traffic “Beat It” was viewed nearly 1 million times from 10 p.m June 25 to noon the next day. Amazon posted a tribute to Jackson on its home page.At Verizon Wireless, the largest mobile operator in the United States, Jackson’s songs took five of the top 10 downloaded songs through the weekend, with “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” “Thriller,” “Beat It” and “Billie Jean” holding the top four spots.SEARCH IS ONDaily search volume for Jackson’s music at peer-to-peer file-sharing networks jumped nine times above the level seen the day before his death (June 24), according to the P2P measurement firm BigChampagne.But downloads and P2P traffic don’t tell the full digital story.

On June 30, Jackson’s singles share increased to 15 of the top 25 songs, while album sales fell to seven of the top 25 titles. Singles, however, fared better, with 11 staying in the top 25, including the No. 2 spot with “Man in the Mirror.”Jackson’s sales also jumped at Amazon’s MP3 store The day after his death, he was the No. 1 artist of the day and had 13 of the top 25 songs sold and 11 of the top 25 digital albums. His album rankings fell to six of the top 15 and 16 of the top 100, but he held on to the top two spots with “The Essential Michael Jackson” and “Number Ones,” respectively. His singles represented 13 of the top 25 songs sold on the same day, with “Man in the Mirror,” “Thriller,” “The Way You Make Me Feel,” “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” and “Smooth Criminal” all making the top 10.By June 30, those totals began to slip.

Similarly, iTunes sales of 16 Jackson solo albums and compilations went from slightly more than 1,000 copies in the week before his death to 225,000 copies for the week ended June 28, sources say.In total, Jackson albums took 10 of the top 15 best-selling album slots and 21 of the top 100 on the day after his death. During the week ended June 28, sales of those same 64 tracks skyrocketed 60-fold to reach 1.8 million copies at iTunes, the sources say. digital vendor and the largest overall music retailer, according to sources. Digital vendors were also helped by the fact that many physical retailers sold out of Jackson albums during the weekend.In the week before his death, 64 key Jackson tracks sold a combined 30,000 copies at iTunes, the dominant U.S. “Anything you ordered, they would bear cost,” says an executive at a midsize U.S. chain.DIGITAL SALES SURGEMeanwhile, Jackson’s catalog did brisk business at digital retailers, which don’t have to worry about supply and already enjoy lower wholesale pricing than brick-and-mortar stores. “Of course, they didn’t ship us what we ordered, but they got us in more than I expected.

The rest of our order will come in during the week.”Moreover, Sony appears to have taken on the costly option of shipping product to individual stores — on an overnight basis — rather than sending bulk shipments to an account’s warehouse. So the entire account base received enough product to get through June 29, with new shipments arriving the next day.”Sony is rationing Jackson product, but they did right by us,” says Carl Mello, head of purchasing for New England-based retailer Newbury Comics. They are just buying it.”Faced with massive demand, Sony decided to ration product rather than try to fulfill entire orders, according to retail sources. The price cuts, which kicked in June 29, lowered the wholesale cost of the standard version of “Thriller” and “Off the Wall” from $9 and $7.81, respectively, to $6.40 and $5.40.With the price change imminent, retailers had been waiting to reorder product at the new price. But when Jackson died, those pricing considerations went out the window.”On Friday morning, I got out of bed and went straight to my computer to order Jackson product,” says Dedry Jones, owner of indie retailer the Music Experience in Chicago “I didn’t care about old price/new price People aren’t asking price on Jackson.