Whitney Houston dies at age 48

Yes, i watched on the news last night. She was huge in the nineties. I remember her singing in the opening cerimony of US World Cup, back in 1994. She was probably the greatest female voice of the USA in the last two decades, what do you think?
 
Houston, she had a problem... too soon?

Already read that one today.

From what I've read, there is no indication of this being related to drug abuse, and the possibility is considered that someone drowned her in the bathtub. Call me cynical, but isn't this all too conveniently placed right before the Grammy awards, a stronghold of a faltering music industry which by now only seems to survive on the deaths of people like Michael Jackson and Amy Winehouse? I'll bet the only tears her record company will shed are out of joy, because now they'll make way more money off her than they ever could have, had she kept recording.

I'm normally not a conspiracy theorist, but this is really starting to look like a pattern. Whitney Houston was an exceptionally talented singer back in the eighties and early nineties, then fell into drug abuse and apparently lost all that made her great. But seeing how big she was back in the day, it is clear that you can still cash in on that... just like with Michael Jackson. And that she was a drug addict is really convenient, because you can just blame her death on that, just like with Amy Winehouse, and people would believe anything with Jackson.

So, is the music industry killing of its stars for a quick and big buck? Discuss...
 
A horrible theory Perun, I mean, it would be horrible if that'd be true.... Let the truth be known.
 
That tweeter, how can he know if some people didn't know her?

edit: sorry I misinterpreted it... indeed, first people talk bad about her abuse and now they suddenly give a fuck.
 
I don't think it's necessary for Wheaton's tweet, but the video I posted is very heavy on it.
That's where the difference between normal text and text with a hyper-link seem to blur...the sentence made sense and as such I didn't see the link. I've watched it since.

@Foro it's an horrendous theory, but record companies behave in such a way that makes people cynical. An example is of Etta James when she died recently, TV adverts where been shown advertising her "Best of.." within two days of her death. OK, she died an old lady, but still...
 
I just can't help but think that from a commercial perspective, there have been a few immensely well-timed deaths in the last three years. Take Michael Jackson: After he had announced his farewell shows, people started becoming interested in him as an artist again. Sure, nobody had forgotten him or his music, but for ten years or more, his pedophilia cases were the very first thing that came to mind when people thought or talked about him. When he sold out fifty shows in a row in one place, which I would wager under normal circumstances would be impossible, it became obvious that this person is still capable of selling big time. If you look at it from the record company's perspective, his planned retirement must have been a terrible prospect, because he would no longer be producing anything, and you couldn't sell off his legacy like that without his consent. But what if he died, just before his planned retirement, without a proper chance of saying goodbye? People would be in grief, they'd feel that they actually lost something, and buy his records like mad, old and new. It was already well-known that he had a stupendous amount of unreleased material, and this can now be happily milked for a strong and steady cash flow.
What about Amy Winehouse? I didn't follow her very much, but I do remember that the weeks and months before her death, she had been on a world tour that turned out to be absolutely horrible, with her performance little more than a bad jokes most of the time. People were starting to think that she would never recover from her drug problems, and her record company must have thought that she would never put out a good (selling) album again. So what if she died the drug death at the age of 27, just like Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin? People would make that connection, see her as an immortal martyr for the case of heartfelt music or whatever, and would be eager to hear if she had any unfinished visions or something like that in the vaults. In other words, she'd generate more revenue with her death than she ever would have alive.
Now, Whitney Houston. Most people will recall just how big she was back in the day, and her big hits are certainly not forgotten. But here again, the only things people have been talking about in the past fifteen years or so were her drug issues. I'd say she was a burden on the companies, because she wouldn't stop making records that didn't sell very well. And seeing how she was only 48, it would be safe to say she would have gone on for another ten years at least. Her early records are the only real cash cow available, so why not give people an incentive to buy them again and again? I admit I haven't followed her career and don't know what she was up to just now, but we can see that the media coverage is huge, and we'll find her records back in all sorts of charts in the next couple of weeks, without doubt.
 
Well when I heard the news I was at a gay party so it was a huge deal. In fact, it was someone's birthday and it turned into more of a deathday thing. Honestly, I'm not a conspiracy theorist either but just like Perun said, its a bit suspicious that so many pop icons have just started dropping like flies at ridiculously low ages, all in somewhat suspicious circumstances. Yes, drugs are implicated and quite possible but given how record companies have been, yeah, it could all be a commercial ploy to just get more money out of people. That being said, should we fear for the lives of Maiden? Oh wait, that would never generate as much hysterical hype among the average citizen. Phew.
 
I'd say she was a burden on the companies, because she wouldn't stop making records that didn't sell very well.

So the record company can simply drop her contract, or release a few copies to fulfill it and bury the album. They do it all the time. Why resort to murder? Even if you believe it makes more money than not, why take the risk when you can simply get rid of the loss?

People die. There's no conspiracy here.
 
Like I said, I don't know about a full blown conspiracy, but you have to admit, its a bit weird. Coincidences happen though.
 
I hate to admit it, but I am one of those people that when an artist dies, I regain interest and will buy a few CDs, with the recent deaths of MJ, Winohouse and Houston I became all to aware of that fact and decided NOT to purchase any albums... at least not yet. I figure, I didn't when they were alive, I can wait a few more years when it all dies down (hehe, dies down), the company is going to get the money anyway, whether it is today or tomorrow, but buying it now makes me sick.
 
Seriously people, are we actually considering the possibility that record companies are murdering their artists? O_O What. The. FUCK?
 
Whoa their cowboy, "We" sounds like a lot of people. It is an entertaining notion (hehe, I'm killing with the puns today! OH! there's another one!), but at the end of the day, no proof, no dice.
 
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