One week on, Michael Jackson’s death is still seeing an outpouring of emotions and tributes. His music is replayed on radio, his music videos broadcast over television and YouTube.

On the Internet, Facebook and Twitter users paid tribute to this entertainer of our generation—a generation that once weaned on to cassette tapes before CDs and iPods took over.

Nevertheless, as a big fan, his loss resonated even further and took a greater significance from a chance encounter with a primary school friend whom I have not spoken to for 16 years.

He refreshed my memory simply with one sentence:

“We were both the biggest MJ fans man.”

It was ironic how Michael Jackson’s death came on the same day of this chance encounter.

Back then, we were really big fans as we exchanged posters, spent hours talking about his music and wondered why a grown man would grab his crotch as a dance move.

I remembered us singing along to Beat It and Bad on our excursion trips in buses—and getting scolded by our teacher to sit down and shut up.

I remembered waiting patiently for the cassette tape to rewind before playing one of his albums for the umpteenth time—with the tape sometimes getting tangled up.

I remembered it became uncool to be an MJ fan due to the bad press and allegations he received as I grew older.

No one wanted to be associated with Wacko Jacko then, though I’m sure many secretly remained big fans from the deluge of tributes left on Facebook and Twitter.

Then it struck me that Michael Jackson’s death meant much more than simply the death of one of the greatest pop icons of all time: it felt like a part of our childhood had died along with him.

The memories and shared experiences created with friends and family through the sheer force of his music was something most fans treasured greatly. This was perhaps why people went out to the streets singing and dancing to celebrate the joy of his music.

But there is an even greater significance.

Michael Jackson belonged to an era where the attention given to his performances and music was undivided, as families and friends gathered around the television and radio immersed in his talent.

Today, we watch (and rewatch) the music videos that we like over YouTube, listen to thousands of songs on our MP3 players, all without the constraints of traditional media.

In the book The Long Tail, Chris Anderson explains that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from “hits” (mainstream products and markets) to a million of niches.

Armed with unlimited choice, consumers can now dictate what they want to consume for their media. Their attention is fragmented away from the usual dose of television and radio. Ratings for massive television events like the Oscars have plummeted from 55 million in 1998 to just over 36 million viewers this year.

Michael Jackson sold some 750 million albums—the most that any artist has seen. His ability to sell albums may remain unsurpassed as music sales enter a new paradigm where albums are no longer bundled and instead, individual tracks are being downloaded through online stores such as iTunes.

His emergence also coincided with the birth of MTV and the realisation that music videos would become an essential tool for marketing music.

He splashed out $500,000 for his music video Thriller—an unprecedented sum in 1983—and took music videos to another level. The 14-minute extravaganza became a cult hit and was broadcast all over the world, fueling his album sales.

Although social networks on the Internet may have propelled unsigned singers such as Colbie Caillat to fame—arguably something not possible before the Internet—it remains questionable if any artist could make the same impact around the world as Michael Jackson did.

Though the Internet may have helped to blur borders and make the world a smaller place, at the same time it has also made it more difficult to captivate the world’s attention as Michael Jackson did, aided by the traditional media of television and radio.

He could just be the last global entertainer.

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