Biggest record deal signed in history with MJ estate

[Nathan]

http://www.cnbc.com/id/35887574

Worth $250,000,000, the albums are set to include vocal and songwriting contributions from old and new artists alike, rumored to include such collaborations as with Lenny Kravitz, Akon, Freddie Mercury, Jermaine Jackson, and many more. First album of the deal set for release in November.

[Autosaver]

Cool

[max_cady]

Looking foward to seeing those posthumous releases.

I'm sure MJ had a wealth of unreleased material that could fill up literally tons of albums, not just sticking one song per compilation.

[Berto]

Not fond with "The self-proclaimed King of Pop" wording on the article..

Actually it's not self-proclaimed, it was Liz Taylor who proclaim him as The King of Pop.
And then fans and newspapers quoted her word many times until the term became popular.

[Clint Forrester]

So uh

What do you guys think of these albums? Personally I wish they had been mastered as if they were made in the 80's, rather than using today's atrocious brickwalled audio techniques.

[Berto]

So uh

What do you guys think of these albums? Personally I wish they had been mastered as if they were made in the 80's, rather than using today's atrocious brickwalled audio techniques.

May be because it's intended for new fans too, 90's gen and afterward.
I got friends who only enjoy Michael's music post Dangerous Album,
they couldn't enjoy Bad, Thriller, or Off The Wall.
Some only love his relaxing-tone song (Heal The World, Gone Too Soon, Cry, You Are Not Alone) and couldn't enjoy his dance music.
But I consider them as fans anyway since they bought Michael's album.

As for me, I'll grab almost anything MJ's related.
I've been his fan since SEGA's Moonwalker arcade game came out.
I bought Bad since I love the game's music and Bad feels like a Moonwalker's OST Album.
After that I began backtracking his album and collecting all his album I could find on the new or used cassette store.
(Jackson 5 related were harder to find on my country back then).
Yeah, strangely as how it sound, I became MJ's fan because of SEGA.

[crackdude]

Yeah, strangely as how it sound, I became MJ's fan because of SEGA.

not strange at all

[Clint Forrester]

Post-Dangerous MJ music is okay, my problem still being that the mixing isn't as good as albums used to be prior to the mid-90's or so. Compare the dynamic range values for these MJ albums:

Off the Wall (1983 CD pressing):
http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/74172

XScape (2014 CD):
http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/84564

XScape ("Deluxe HD" download version):
http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/65720

And here you can listen for yourself, how different the 1983 CD sounds from the 2014 album:

"Working Day and Night":
https://youtu.be/bp-Tv_yEFfs
"Love Never Felt So Good":
https://youtu.be/7NIXlRBWevo

Even with Youtube compression keeping the audio from sounding as good as the original CD, the differences should be obvious. The first track sounds really crisp, the drums and bass have kick, the claps and cymbals are sharp, the music really breathes and no instruments overpower any other - it sounds amazing, especially considering the age of the track.

The second track, on the other hand, sounds very squashed, the bass clips a LOT, the instruments are all compressed together to be at about the same loudness (which isn't at all how instruments are in real life) - it's a real mess. The song is good, but the mastering is horrible compared to the 1983 version of "Off the Wall".

Regardless of what you may think of the man, I do feel that MJ's music deserves better treatment than this.

[Berto]

Nice comparison.
I never gave much though about it before, but now yeah, the almost same loudness for all instruments feels..... lazy.
I bet Michael would never approve this if he's still alive. He's such a perfectionist.

And also I think he'd never approve all that Ubisoft's MJ: The Experience franchise series.
Reducing him from Superheroes (Moonwalker) and Intergalactic Artist (Space Channel 5) into just a mere dancer.
 

[crackdude]

The bad mixing merely reflects how low-fi the music industry has become over time.
People's ears are numb from all the 128k bitrates of the past 15 years, and most believe music with larger range sounds bad.

The excessive normalization pleases the masses and is radio-friendly. Such sad state