Jackson was born in Gary, Indiana, the eighth of ten children of Joseph and Katherine Jackson. He began performing publicly as a young child alongside his brothers in The Jackson 5, which signed with Motown Records in 1968 and had a run of major hit singles while Michael was still only a boy. His sister Janet Jackson also went on to become a major recording star in her own right, making the Jacksons one of the most successful musical families of the 20th century.

After a string of Jackson 5 hits, Michael launched a solo career that took off fully with 1979’s Off the Wall. His 1982 album Thriller became the best-selling album of all time, a Guinness World Record it still holds, with sales estimated at well over 70 million copies worldwide. The elaborate short film for the title track helped transform MTV and the music-video format itself. He followed Thriller with Bad (1987), Dangerous (1991), and HIStory (1995), cementing a run of commercial and cultural dominance that few artists before or since have matched.

Photo: Larry Davis, Los Angeles Times via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Jackson’s later studio output included Invincible (2001), and in 2009 he announced a planned comeback run of 50 concerts at London’s O2 Arena, titled This Is It. He died on June 25, 2009, in Los Angeles before the tour began, of acute propofol intoxication administered by his personal physician. The posthumous documentary This Is It, built from rehearsal footage, went on to gross more than $260 million worldwide, an early sign of how large his commercial afterlife would become.

Photo: Daniele Dalledonne from Trento, Italy via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Forbes has repeatedly named Jackson the top-earning deceased celebrity in the years since his death, with the estate’s annual income frequently exceeding $100 million — reported at roughly $105 million in Forbes’s most recent “highest-paid dead celebrities” ranking. That income is driven overwhelmingly by music catalog royalties, the long-running Cirque du Soleil show, and licensing of his name, image, and recordings.

The single biggest driver of Jackson’s posthumous wealth has been music publishing. In 1985 he purchased the ATV Music Publishing catalog, which included the rights to most Beatles songs, for $47.5 million — a deal many in the industry considered wildly overpriced at the time. In 1995 he merged that catalog with Sony’s publishing arm to form Sony/ATV Music Publishing, retaining a 50% stake. In 2016, the estate sold its remaining 50% of Sony/ATV to Sony for $750 million. In 2024, the estate sold a 50% stake in Mijac Music, the catalog covering Jackson’s own songwriting, to Sony for roughly $600 million, a transaction that valued the Mijac catalog at about $1.2 billion. Together, these catalog transactions transformed an estate that was reportedly around $500 million in debt at the time of Jackson’s death into one of the wealthiest in entertainment.

During his career, Jackson held one of the largest endorsement deals of the era with Pepsi, a partnership from the mid-1980s reported to be worth several million dollars and famous for the ad-shoot accident in which his hair caught fire. Since his death, the estate has continued to license his name, likeness, and music catalog for commercials, video games, and stage productions, generating ongoing licensing income even though there are, naturally, no new personal endorsement deals.

The estate’s most significant commercial venture since 2009 has been its partnership with Cirque du Soleil, which produced Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour in 2011 and the permanent stage show Michael Jackson ONE, which opened at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas in 2013 and has remained one of the strip’s most successful residencies for over a decade. Combined with merchandise, the This Is It film, and continued music catalog licensing, these ventures have made the estate a highly diversified and durable earner rather than a one-off catalog sale.

Jackson’s best-known property was Neverland Ranch, the roughly 2,700-acre estate in California’s Santa Ynez Valley that he purchased in 1988 for an estimated $17-19 million. The property fell into foreclosure risk in 2008 before a rescue deal with Colony Capital kept it out of Jackson’s hands entirely at the time of his death. The estate, later renamed Sycamore Valley Ranch, was ultimately sold in 2020 to billionaire Ron Burkle for a reported price far below its original asking price of around $100 million, reflecting the immense cost of maintaining the property.