Music Ally

With the refund policy for Michael Jackson’s This Is It concerts well underway, we haven’t heard yet just how many fans chose to get commemorative tickets instead of their money back. Even so, AEG Live has other irons in the fire when it comes to recouping its investment in the late singer.

It’s just released the trailer for the official Michael Jackson’s This Is It movie, which can be watched online at the official site. Based on more than 100 hours of backstage footage from his rehearsals for the planned run of gigs at London’s O2, it’s getting a cinematic release next month, plus a DVD version.

There’s also a dash of Web 2.0 marketing around it via a ‘fan mosaic’, with fans being invited to upload their photos for inclusion in the promotional artwork for the release. Thankfully, this is one element of the post-death promotional push that’s not being charged for.

Did you watch it? And if so, did you tweet about it? It seems a lot of people did: during and after the memorial event, the top ten trending topics on Twitter were all Jackson-related (including KFC, which got a high-profile endorsement during the ceremony from Magic Johnson).

Other stats: CNN delivered 8.9 million live video streams during the event, according to TechCrunch, while Ustream delivered 4.6 million. Meanwhile, Facebook integrated with several live video sites letting people post status updates while watching, and says more than one million users posted 800,000 updates during the memorial.

Oh, and more than 800,000 virtual MJ gloves have been given as gifts on Facebook too.

Nokia is the latest digital music company to reveal the booming popularity of Michael Jackson songs since the star’s death a couple of weeks ago.

Globally, seven of the ten top downloaded songs by Comes With Music users last week were by Michael Jackson, according to figures shared with Music Ally by Nokia. He also accounted for nine of the top ten albums.

In fact, one third of all CWM customers downloaded at least one Jacko track last week, with Billie Jean the most popular, followed by Beat It. Jackson jumped from the 21st most popular artist on CWM globally before his death, to first place now.

It’s very much a global thing, too. In Mexico, 25% of all CWM downloads last week were Jackson tracks, while in Brazil, he accounted for 25 of the top 40 downloads. Meanwhile, downloads of Jacko songs increased tenfold in the United Arab Emirates.

AEG Live issued a statement over the weekend clarifying its plans to refund people who’ve bought tickets for the planned run of 50 Michael Jackson gigs at The O2 in London. Well, we say clarified, it’s more telling people when they plan to clarify their plans.

“On behalf of the entire AEG organisation we extend our deepest condolences to Michael Jackson’s family and friends during this tragic time. Full ticket refund information and procedures will be released early next week for all Michael Jackson “This Is It” shows. Fans are advised to hold onto their ticket vouchers/proof of purchase.”

Ticketmaster, which emailed the statement to everyone who’d bought tickets from it, added that it will contact all these customers once AEG’s refund plans have been finalised.

This doesn’t, of course, apply to people who bought tickets on eBay or from ticket reselling sites. For more on the potential fallout in the secondary ticketing market from Jackson’s death, read our post from Friday.

Something tells us we’re going to see a lot of MJ-related stories today. We’re only going to cover the ones directly relevant to the music industry. Which means PRS for Music’s launch of an online condolence book for Michael Jackson gets in.

“Michael Jackson was an iconic figure in the music industry, a global inspiration to songwriters and performers everywhere as well as the ultimate showman himself,” says chief executive Steve Porter. “He leaves a gaping hole in the music world.”

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A storm may be brewing in the secondary ticketing market, following the death of Michael Jackson last night. With 750,000 tickets sold for his planned run of gigs at London’s The O2 venue – many of which have been re-sold through the secondary market – the after-effects could shine a spotlight on secondary ticketing – and specifically how trustworthy it is, and how honest ticket resellers will prove to be.

While Michael Jackson’s official Sony-hosted site, the Seatwave and Viagogo secondary ticket sites have acknowledged the pop icon’s death, concert promoter AEG’s MichaelJacksonLive.com is still displaying the same buzz and hype as it did in the days prior to his death. At the time of writing, Ticketmaster.co.uk is still allowing fans to explore dates for Jacko’s O2 concert run as if the star wasn’t dead. Ticketmaster has now taken the O2 dates off the site.

It is expected, though not yet fully confirmed, that legitimate retailers will offer full refunds to ticket buyers, leaving promoter AEG out of pocket to the tune of tens of millions of pounds. UPDATE: Seatwave has confirmed this, according to BBC News Online. But Jackson’s concert run was arguably the biggest yet to provide official blessing to secondary ticket retail through partners such as Viagogo, with yet more tickets sold at marked-up prices through eBay.

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You’ve probably already heard that Michael Jackson has died: it’s going to be all over both mainstream and social media for some time yet. Music sites and stores have been quick to post their tributes to the star, too.

So, We7 has a tribute playlist, while Spotify’s (public) office playlist today is purely Jackson songs. Imeem also has a Jackson playlist plus tribute, while Apple has gone with a regular promo button on the iTunes Store (pictured) taking users through to his albums – complete with a past-tense artist profile.

One site that hasn’t yet been updated, however, is AEG’s own Michael Jackson Live site, promoting his planned 50-date residency at The O2 venue in London. We’ll have more on the implications of the now-cancelled gigs on the blog later today.

Bluetooth headsets are quite boring, eh? If only someone could design one based on, ooh, Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’… Oh, they have!

It’s part of a contest run by Nokia called Music Almighty, which invited people to design Bluetooth headsets based on songs. After 6,000 entries, five winners have now been picked and manufactured as one-off devices.

The Jackson one is pretty nice, but there’s also a nifty headset based on Daft Punk’s ‘Robot Rock’, and a marvellous one with wings based on R. Kelly’s ‘I Believe I Can Fly’. They took the literal approach on that one. We’d rather see a range of headsets based on the R&B star’s ‘Trapped In The Closet’ hip-hopera though.

Fans who registered to buy Michael Jackson tickets have received a follow-up email inviting them to vote for their ideal setlist at his 50 O2 gigs by constructing a playlist on the official AEG site.

However, it’s a bit limited – while you can pick songs and move them around, there are no streams or even 30-second clips to listen to. Perhaps they’re assuming that fans can remember all the songs without a clip to help – or more realistically, perhaps they don’t want to pay the streaming licensing fees.

Also, bafflingly, there’s no quickfire option to say `All the old stuff, nothing after Bad, especially not Earth Song’. And no Jackson 5 tracks are included either, so you can’t request ABC or I Want You Back. Come on AEG, this needs a bit more lateral thinking…

It’s all gone a bit Pete Tong between promoter AEG Live and secondary ticketing site Viagogo. The latter had some kind of official relationship with AEG for the 50 Michael Jackson gigs at The O2 – it was linked to by the official MichaelJacksonLive website, and around 10% of the seats for each night were set aside to be sold as “official premium” tickets.

Except now AEG has won a court order forcing Viagogo to agree not to offer or provide its tickets to any other resellers. Apparently Viagogo sent an email to other agents offering to cut bulk deals on inventory. “We went nuclear” says AEG Live boss Randy Phillips. “It was not our intent to sell to brokers”.

No, only approved brokers, clearly.