Born to earn! Springsteen sells song rights for record £376m
BRUCE Springsteen has sold the rights to his music in a deal thought to be worth £376million ($500million).
The 20-time Grammy winner, whose hits include Born To Run, Dancing in the Dark and Born In The USA, is the latest star to sell his back catalogue.
He has given music giant Sony full ownership of his 20 studio albums, according to reports in the US.
Nicknamed ‘The Boss’, 72-year-old Springsteen has been with Sony’s Columbia Records for his entire 50-year career and his music generated $15 million (£11.3 million) in revenue last year.
The deal to sell his master recordings and publishing rights follows the likes of David Bowie, Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Investors, major music production labels and private equity firms are spending billions of pounds on music rights as they try to cash in on the rising popularity of streaming.
In May, Sony Music chief executive Robert Stringer said the company had spent $1.4billion (£1.05billion) in acquisitions over the previous six months. The figure includes a multi-million-dollar deal for the rights to Paul Simon’s back catalogue but Springsteen’s deal is set to be the most lucrative so far.
Springsteen, who was born and raised in New Jersey, is one of the most successful rock musicians of all time.
His breakthrough came in 1975 with his third album, Born To Run, and his 1984 release, Born In The USA, is one of the biggest-selling albums of all time. But despite his huge worldwide success and sales of more than 150million records, Springsteen has never had a No1 single. The closest he has got was when British band Manfred Mann topped the charts in 1977 with Blinded By The Light, which Springsteen wrote and released in 1973.
Representatives for Springsteen – who won the Best Original Song Academy Award in 1994 for the theme to the Tom Hanks film Philadelphia – and Sony declined to comment last night.