DJ Spook

After his death, Jackson became the best-selling artist of 2009 in the United States selling over 8.2 million albums and 31 million albums worldwide. Following this surge in sales, Sony announced that they had extended their relationship with his material. On March 16, 2010, Sony Music Entertainment, spearheaded by its Columbia/Epic Label Group division, signed a new deal with the Jackson estate to extend their distribution rights to his back catalogue until at least 2017, as well as to obtain permission to release ten new albums with previously unreleased material and new collections of released work.

The first new album is reportedly due out in November 2010, and the final album before December 2017. Billboard estimates that Jackson’s estate generated $1 billion in the 12 months that followed his death.