Cash Cow Franchise / Music

• Enrico Caruso: Italian opera singer who was world famous in the 1900s-1920s and one of the first examples of a global media celebrity. He was the first musical artist whose records sold millions internationally, almost singlehandedly creating the immense fortune of RCA Victor. He was an excellent self-publicist who created his own franchise, appearing in zillions of performances at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and touring worldwide, charity and benefit appearances including WWI war bond sales, posing for zillions of photographs, giving zillions of interviews, selling his own art (he was a skilled draftsman and his funny caricature sketches were much in demand), endorsing various products, even appearing in a couple of films. Toward the end of his life he planned with his older son Rodolfo to create a partnership establishing a Caruso Pasta Company.
• Elvis Presley: Mass marketed ever since the 1950s with album records (RCA Victor again), films, TV specials, Las Vegas shows,... Even more astonishing is that he never toured outside the U.S.A. (except for Canada once), because manager Colonel Parker, who was an illegal immigrant, feared that he wouldn't be able to return to the U.S. Despite never going on international tour Elvis still managed to attract an enormous international audience that still hasn't died down. He even sold more records after his death than in his entire life. As Michael O'Donoghue purportedly remarked when told of Elvis' death in 1977, "Good career move."
• The Beatles: Have never been out of the public eye ever since the 1960s and are one of the few internationally popular musical acts that are both popular with the general public as the more alternative listeners. For instance, each re-release of their music in a new recording format is always big news. Apple Corps. released 13 Beatles albums and one Beatles video game (on three platforms) on the same day, and appears to be getting away with it. And then there's LOVE.
• Paul McCartney as performing artist and (former) Beatle is this by association. That he still can sing doesn't hurt (not that death has stopped John Lennon from putting out new albums). That his own management markets him as aggressively as they dare results in highly lucrative tours.
• hide, due in part due to his skill and talent and iconic style... but more sadly after his death due to his brother and estate owner Hiroshi Matsumoto reaching Corrupt Corporate Executive levels of greed, filing Frivolous Lawsuits , which were only stopped when he managed to sue someone with even more money and legal firepower, churning out tons of Greatest Hits type compilations and crappily made merch. He even licensed hide's magnum opus and image song Pink Spider to a pop artist for a cover, which led to a boycott of him and the official estate by some fans.
• ABBA, who even inspired a musical with two film adaptions, and a stage residence with a virtual recreation of the band.
• The Rolling Stones — who never actually went away. They have three of the highest-grossing tours ever, with the highest at fourth - and yet, two of the ones above needed more shows to surpass the Stones, the exception being U2n (which is also the only one with three tours).
• The Who. They broke up in 1982, but seemingly never stopped performing comeback shows once a 1989 tour proved a huge hit.
• Bob Marley: Internationally one of the most successful musical artists of all time, especially in Third World countries. He became even more legendary after his death.
• Michael Jackson was mass-marketed from his childhood onwards: TV specials, clothing, an animated cartoon series (Jackson5ive in The '70s), music videos, merchandising, the best-selling album of all time, Pepsi commercials, etc. Despite bad publicity and declining record sales from The '90s onward he still remained in the picture as tabloid fodder. After his death his sales skyrocketed to previously unheard-of levels for catalog releases and his reputation was mostly restored (with not one, but two Cirque du Soleil shows built around his work pulling down millions in ticket sales). His posthumous earnings potential is limited by the fact that his estate focuses on his solo work, which only yielded six albums and an EP (The Onion joked, shortly after he died, that there are only so many times people will buy Thriller). Much of his unreleased work already saw the light of day on reissues and/or a box set in his lifetime, and 2010's posthumously-assembled Michael wasn't the blockbuster it was expected to be.
• Tupac Shakur's death in 1996 hasn't stopped his record label from releasing every single studio outtake, rough mix, or demo track that he ever recorded, to the point that his posthumous record catalog is larger than what he released while he was alive (this has, naturally, spawned many convoluted theories that Shakur is still alive and recording in secret).
• Frank Zappa. The crazy bastard recorded 53 some-odd albums in a 30-year career. There is gonna be a metric shitload of outtakes and demos for the studios to release, plus compilations and best-of albums. A 60-album reissue sequence launched in 2012!
• The 1996 death of Sublime's Brad Nowell similarly did not stop his record label from releasing a fantastic array of posthumous works, with the numerous compilation and live albums produced after his death than far exceeding the number of studio albums produced prior. And a reunion tour in 2010.
• A large repertoire of classical music has been performed centuries after the deaths of composers and original performers. While the music is often well worth preserving, tourist concerts at Vienna may be considered milking the cash cow. And candy named after Mozart.
• The list of bands who have done comeback shows or records despite important band members dead, retired or just not being what they used to be includes the following:
  • The Doors — all after the death of Jim Morrison: two records without Morrison, an album of Morrison reading poetry with music recorded for the album, and a "tribute album" with a bevy of guest vocalists, nowadays touring as Riders On The Storm after John Densmore and the Morrison estate sued to prevent them from performing under the Doors brand.
  • Led Zeppelin (whose comeback show was actually very good)
  • Queen, who at least took great pains to advertise their shows as "Queen + Paul Rodgers" to make it clear that Rodgers is not a replacement for the dear departed Freddie Mercury. Reportedly Freddie Mercury said that if anyone could/should replace him as frontman, he would want it to be Paul Rodgers. Paul Rogers has since been replaced with Adam Lambert.
  • Eagles — Don Henley said that they would re-unite "when Hell freezes over". Hell froze over in 1994 and has had periodic re-freezings since then.
  • Roger Waters declared Pink Floyd "a creatively spent force" after he left in 1985, but the band kept right on topping the charts and filling arenas. Waters himself earned oodles of cash with tours based on The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall.
• KISS works in both fronts: not only releases many compilations, live albums, etc, but also has an empire of licensed merchandising, that ranges from the ever popular action figures to condoms, going through...Kiss Kaskets! (which Pantera's Dimebag Darrell and Vinnie Paul were buried in). There's also the movie Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park (though the band would).
• This also applies to Jimi Hendrix, who left behind a stunning amount of officially completed and released studio tracks, posthumously completed tracks (often meddled with and unauthorized), live recordings (and filmed performances), demos, home recordings, outtakes, bootlegs, alternate takes, TV, film and radio performances and unreleased recordings from the early 1960's to his death in 1970, alongside perennial rereleases and repackagings of his official back catalogue, enough to keep the archives busy for 40 years. A new release of rare and unreleased recordings, Valleys of Neptune debuted in the top five in March 2010 nearly forty years after his death, shattering Elvis's record.
• The memory and legend of Woodstock are strong enough that it will always be fairly useful as a cash cow, for the bands who played at that fateful concert and the nostalgic merchandisers; though anything as ambitious as organizing a new Woodstock has never gone as well as the spirit of Woodstock would have wanted it.
• Given the number of redundant compilations that The Smiths' record label has put out, it's fair to say that this is what they've become. This is especially ironic, since they parodied this kind of treatment in the song "Paint a Vulgar Picture."
• David Bowie is a quiet example. He was a Reclusive Artist from 2008 to his death in 2016, and stopped touring after 2004, but his music is so popular that in The '90s he made millions with what came to be known as "Bowie Bonds". Expanded reissues of his albums date back to the turn of The '90s and the "Sound+Vision" runthrough of his 1969-80 catalog; since 2002, a special and/or remastered edition of one of his albums is an annual event (2008 was an exception, but the official release of the much-loved bootleg Live Santa Monica '72 arrived instead). Multiple new books about/involving Bowie, be they biographies, photo retrospectives, or analyses of his initial impact and/or continuing influence, arrive yearly. The multimedia retrospective David Bowie Is — featuring scores of artifacts, costumes, etc. from his personal archive — launched in 2013 at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, smashed the museum's attendance records, and toured internationally after that. He died just two days after releasing his last album, and this didn't so much renew public interest in his work as reconfirm that it will be beloved and bought for decades to come.
• Before Taylor Swift left her original record label, Big Machine, after her contract expired in November 2018, she was bringing in roughly 80% of their annual revenue all by herself.
• Former Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash. His name is on every kind of music equipment a guitarist would need. So far he has 8 Gibson/Epiphone Signature Les Paul guitars (Two of which are the exact same product, only with different names on the headstock. No spec-differences at all), 3 Marshall Signature Amplifiers, 2 Dunlop/MXR Signature Wah-Pedals, a signature Slide and a Seymour-Duncan Slash Signature Pick-Up set, etc. And counting… In fact, the only thing he doesn't have signature-versions of are a custom string-set (although he's probably trying to get that arranged) and cables. Given his appeal and skill, it's no surprise his return to GNR resulted in one of the five highest-grossing tours ever.
• The bunny characters Snuggle and Snuggelina created by German cellphone and music company Jamster have sung a lot of songs released over the years, and the characters are so popular that they got a few audiobooks released in Germany and even appeared in various live shows in Germany. Unlike Jamster's other character Crazy Frog, which the majority of the public didn't like, Snuggle and Snuggelina have gotten a lot of positive reception from the public. While the duo are unknown in other countries, you can find a lot of merchandise featuring the two if you visit any store or shop in Germany.
• Pinkfong, a Korean educational brand, had a major cash cow on its hands when their version of the classic song "Baby Shark" became a viral hit and achieved a billion views on YouTube. The song's popularity earned it a merchandise line of toys, clothing, cereal, and even an animated Nickelodeon show.
• Blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa has a mailing list. They will try to sell you all sorts of Joe Bonamassa branded products, many of which have nothing to do with music. One of the more blatant examples? Garden gnomes.

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