It was a question of honour. For five years George Michael had to fight with his record company Sony Music. Now he finally got back his freedom. and there is a new single out on the market, too. But music business is asking itself: Are George Michael's songs really worth 80 million bucks?
13. September 1994 - at that time nothing pointed to the fact yet that at this day there would be written Pop-history. It was a normal Tuesday morning in New York. fitness-freaks jogged trough Central Park, bad mooded workers overflooded their offices in thousands. wall street calmly woke up. in a elegant apartment in midtown-Manhattan three men met. the atmosphere was friendly, an everyday business-talk. there was only one man, the youngest, unusually well burnt skin, perfect cut beard, wearing a designer dress, seeming strangely quiet and absent.
For George Michael this meeting was the end of a five year long during nightmare. a nightmare, which costed him 7 million dollars, took every bit of creativity from him and brought the end of his career damn close to him. Why? in summer 1990, the popstar had decided to go to court with his record company SONY. He thought his record contract being unfair and wanted to urge the record company to break the contract.
It was not, that George Michael would have had the risk to end up in poorness. The multi-millionaire was quite happily travelling between his villa in south-France and his flat in London, took the chances to sing for prestige-filled happenings like the MTV music awards and lived all in all pretty well. and yet he didn't want to rest up in that situation. This was because he had discovered how very clever colleagues of him, like Sting or Elton John had managed to get the bucks out of the record companies. but the Sony managers didn't want to give any more money and let George bite on stone. the agreements in this contract had already been set in the mid 80s (the start of WHAM!).
Then George Michael started to "mob" against his record company with small cruelties: he didn't want to give any more interviews, refused to appear in his own videos "Too funky" and "Freedom". of course, these two videos became legendary with the appearance of supermodels Helena Christensen, Naomi Campebell and Cindy Crawford, but SONY was pretty angry anyway. finally even the album "Listen Without Prejudice" had to be released without any photograph of the star. SONY took revenge in refusing any marketing activities on that album. but of course, this was like a suicide - other than with "Faith" which was sold over 15 Mill. copies worldwide, "Listen Without Prejudice" only managed to sell 7 Mill copies. that was the well awaited fact for George Michael to go in court with SONY. the musician lost the six-month trial in a bitter way. He had to fulfil his contract. SONY triumphed.
September 13th 1994 in New York, George Michael met his worst enemies, Mel Ilberman and Mickey Schulhof, presidents of Sony Music International and Sony America. the meeting was about to find a more or less fair way to break out of that contract. why? George Michael refused to sing any single word for SONY and SONY didn't want to let the money-wheel George Michael just go away.
Pop business is in bitter crisis since two years. Record companies are being overtaken by majors; Virgin went to EMI, EMI shall - if we believe in rumours - be overtook by MCA. MCA was recently bought by Canadian whiskey-giant Edgar Bronfman Jr. and his company SEAGRAM. on the manager seats one discovers a bizarre game about ower. Hire & Fire like "trip to Jerusalem": if you cannot run fast enough you will loose your seat. because success in music business has much to do with personal contacts, sympathies and a good "smell" for the proper "HIT", superstars start to ask themselves where they have to put their loyalty in. Artists are being handled like cows, whose milk has to be taken as well as possible. Only few of the artists can stand up for their right. George Michael had the status and the money to do so. His loss was a loss for all artists around. Michael's speech at the end of the trial has become legendary: "with this contract SONY is practicing legal slavery"
Other musicians became loyal with George Michael. Simply Red's Mick Hucknal applauded to George Michael and wrote: it's completely absurd that I have to pay all of the recording of my album, the musicians, the material - and in the end all of the stuff belongs to someone else. PRINCE made a well known settlement: in public he always had the sign telling what he was thinking his status was: SLAVE.
Helmut Ffest, CEO of EMI music Germany only gets a grin over the problems of all these superstars:"it's a fact that the superstars earn a lot MORE money on their records than the COMPANIES. the myth about the million-seller who ends up in walking home with nothing than a pair of jeans to wear is not actual anymore. Exceptions like George Michael just prove about the RULE."
In Germany, you have to pay an avg. of 30 marks for a "normal" CD (Pop, Rock). approx. 15 to 20 marks are being sent to the record company (that differs from contract to contract). that's not so bad, even if we admit that expensive setting up of a band, studio-costs, videos, promotion, marketing with full staff have to be paid by that amount. GIANT Polygram has sold records and other stuff for 860 Millions of German Marks within the last year. Sony is second with 452 Millions of marks.
The German market with the potential of 4,6 Billions of German Marks accures huge wins. musicians which do not fit the top ten, innovative ones, have to accept small amounts for their work.
For George Michael this adventure turned out
well: he was sold out of the contract. the new company Dreamworks SKG which is a joint venture of Steven Spielberg, former DISNEY
Boss Jeffrey Kathenberg and Pop-Icon David GEFFEN, pays half of the price for that deal together with VIRGIN which is signing the
contract with the artist. Sony is getting 45 Millions of Dollars (CASH), 3 % of the sellings of the next 2 George-Michael Albums and
of course keeps any rights on the previous recordings of George. The WINNING sum for SONY coming out from that deal is being
approximated with 70 Million Dollars. George Michael himself gets 10 Million Dollars, 20% out of the record-sellings and keeps any
rights on the forthcoming recordings. That's a deal which is more likely being made in wall-street than in record business. Five
highly specialised lawyers have worked on the contract for weeks. the contract consists of more than 400 pages. and all just for one
hope: A few HITS... the new Single of George Michael is "Jesus To A Child". In this Soul-ballad the faithful anglo-greek
is hoping to get the heavenly "kick". it seems that this highest possible source of inspiration is the last left hope in
this poker.
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