Many think of Michael Jackson as the King of Pop, the Moonwalker, and he practically owns Halloween with “Thriller”. However, MJ the music business genius doesn’t get spoken about often enough.

Did you know that on August 14th, 1985, right before his 27th birthday, Mike bought ATV Music for $47.5 Million? With that transaction he acquired close 4,000 songs, including the Beatles catalog and songs by The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Little Richard, and Elvis. Now THAT’s a flex...

Fast Forward 10 years later and MJ sold 50% of his ownership, creating a partnership with Sony (Sony/ATV), for $100 Million. To put that into perspective, if he had invested the initial $47.5 Milly into the S&P500 in 1985, by 1995 he would have made around $198,953,552.29 if you calculate the approximate 15.40% annual return the fund was getting at the time.

But here’s the caveat, he only sold half for $100 Million, so the full amount would put him at $200 Million. On top of that, the new partnership with Sony would go on to bring in many more catalogs, adding value to Mike’s asset.

In 2016, seven years after his death, his estate sold the remaining 50% for $750 Million. They also sold his share of EMI Music Publishing in 2018 for $287.5 million, and collected dividends from all those assets. In all, his estate collected around $1.6 Billion from those transactions.

Then, last year in 2024, Sony purchased half of MJ’s publishing and recorded masters catalog for around $600 Million. That pushed the total of all sold assets to Sony at over $2 Billion. And his estate still owns half his catalog. Forever a Smooth Criminal.