- Mark Savage
- BBC Music Correspondent
American singer Bruce Springsteen sold the original recordings and publishing rights to all of his work to Sony for about $ 500 million.
The deal gives Sony ownership of their 20 studio albums, including classics like Born to run, The River Y Born In The USA, according to several US reports.
Winner of 20 Grammy Awards, Springsteen and his music generated around $ 15 million in revenue last year.
The pact follows similar transactions made by the works of other legendary artists such as Bob Dylan, Blondie and David Bowie.
Warner Music bought the worldwide rights to Bowie’s music in September and Dylan sold his catalog of more than 600 songs in December last year to Universal Music Group at a purchase price of $ 300 million.
The agreements give them immediate financial security to the artists and their properties, while those who own the rights hope to make a profit by creating new sources of income with such music, through film and television production licenses, merchandise, cover versions, and performance royalties.
Investments
In a meeting with investors in May, Sony Music CEO Rob Stringer said the company had spent US $ 1.4 billion in acquisitions during the previous six months.
Image source, Average PA
That included a multi-million dollar deal to get the rights to Paul Simon’s catalog.
The deal they came up with with Springsteen would be their most expensive yet, if the numbers reported by what’s known as the music industry’s bible, Billboard, are correct.
No public announcement has been made of the sale and neither Sony nor Springsteen representatives immediately responded to the BBC’s request for comment.
Springsteen is one of the most successful rock musicians of all time and has recorded for Sony’s Columbia Records label throughout his career.
“MTV Generation”
Born and raised in New Jersey, Springsteen once said that he tried to make an album with words like Bob Dylan, sounding like Phil Spector and singing like Roy Orbison.
That remains a clear synthesis of his style and a key to understanding his broad appeal, although he has frequently and successfully experimented outside of those borders.
His reputation was solidified in 1974, when music critic Jon Landau reviewed one of his shows with The E Street Band in Boston.
“Last Thursday at the Harvard Square Theater, I saw the past of rock and roll flash before my eyes,” Landau wrote.
“And I saw something else: I saw the future of rock and roll and his name is Bruce Springsteen. And one night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was listening to music for the first time.”
Springsteen’s commercial breakthrough came the following year, with the hit album Born to run.
Received by rave reviews, it sold nine million copies and saw Springsteen accomplish the rare feat of appearing on magazine covers. Time Y Newsweek in the same week.
Image source, Getty Images
In January, Colombian Shakira sold the rights to her music for a multimillion dollar sum.
As one of the hardest-working artists in show business, he earned a reputation for his sweat-drenched concerts that lasted hours and, somewhat unexpectedly, became one of the rising stars of the mtv generation, with iconic videos of songs like Hungry heart Y Dancing In The Dark, while rotating with hits from Madonna, Michael Jackson and Prince.
His biggest success was Born In The USA of 1985, which sold 15 million copies in that country and 30 million worldwide.
In the 1990s, he won an Oscar for the title track of Tom Hanks’ AIDS epidemic drama: Philadelphia.
A 1995 greatest hits album topped the charts, selling four million copies.
Recently, at the age of 72, he published his autobiography, also titled Born to run, and hosted a number of Broadway shows.
His latest album, Letter to you, was released in 2020.
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Bruce Springsteen sells his entire music catalog for $ 500 million – BBC News World