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Houston funeral confirmed, Sony apologises for temporary price hike
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 15 February 2012
A private funeral for Whitney Houston will take place this Saturday in the singer’s hometown of Newark at the modest Baptist church where she first sang in public. It will be an invite-only occasion, though a separate public memorial service at a later date has not been ruled out.
Funeral Director Carolyn Whigham said that Houston’s family thanked the singer’s fans for their prayers and condolences, but that they had requested a private funeral service. Whigham: “It was the family’s decision. They have shared her for 30-some years with the city, with the state, with the world. This is their time now for their farewell to their daughter and mother”.
As previously reported, Houston’s body was flown from LA to New Jersey on Monday, being driven from Teterboro airport to Newark in a gold-coloured hearse. Fans were already gathering outside and leaving floral tributes at the city’s New Hope Baptist Church even before it had been announced as the venue for the private funeral.
Elsewhere in Houston news, online sales of the late singer’s work have continued to boom since her death. According to the Official Charts Company, 20 Houston songs should be in the UK Top 200 this weekend, seven in the Top 40, with her cover of Dolly Parton’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ likely to chart highest.
The singer’s two compilation albums are also both currently in the top five on iTunes UK, while in the US ‘Whitney: The Greatest Hits’ entered the Billboard Top 200 at number six yesterday having shifted 64,000 copies, despite there only being one full day between the singer’s death and the American chart week ending.
Back in the UK, Sony Music has issued a short statement regarding the revelation that the wholesale prices of Whitney’s greatest hits albums were increased shortly after her death this weekend, only to be dropped again later on Sunday. As previously reported, just hours after the singer’s premature demise the price for Whitney’s ‘Ultimate Collection’ rose on iTunes UK from £4.99 to £7.99. It turns out the singer’s other hits album, the more extensive ‘Whitney: The Greatest Hits’, also went up in price temporarily, from £7.99 to £9.99.
It’s been confirmed that the price rises only occurred in the UK, the wholesale price being increased only by Sony’s British division. Needless to say, the price hike – even though it was, as it turns out, only temporary – does not reflect well on the major, making it look like the label, which is set to benefit the most from Houston’s death anyway in terms of new record sales, was trying to cash in even more.
A source previously told The Guardian that a Sony exec, when checking what Whitney albums were stocked on iTunes after her death, noticed her compilations had previously been logged with Apple at the wrong price, and therefore the price rise was simply rectifying a previous error. Whether there is any truth in that we don’t know, but Sony didn’t rely on that excuse in its official apology.
It said yesterday: “Whitney Houston product was mistakenly mispriced on the UK iTunes store on Sunday. When discovered, the mistake was immediately corrected. We apologise for any offense caused”.
The error – described as an “internal mistake due to an employee error” by a Sony insider to Billboard – only affected UK music stores, though there is some confusion as to whether the price hike was limited to iTunes, or whether Amazon and possibly HMV were also informed of the price change.
