Bruce Springsteen, one of the most famous singers in the history of rock, has sold the rights to his immense catalog of music to Sony for half a billion dollars. The deal, revealed by Billboard and from New York Times, has not yet been officially announced. Both the record company and the rock star's staff have not released a statement, but if the amount is confirmed, it would be the highest amount ever paid by a label record company to acquire an artist's songs and albums.
The $500 million deal involves 20 studio-recorded records, including the legendary “Born in the USA”, winner of 15 platinum records, and the iconic “The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle”, “The River”, “Nebraska”, “The Ghost of Tom Joad”. To these are added 8 live albums and as many collections. This is Springsteen's entire output from his 1973 debut with “Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ” to today.
Thanks to this agreement, Sony will be able to manage the copyright of the entire repertoire of the singer from New Jersey, cashing in the proceeds from listening to and using his songs. We are talking about potentially enormous revenues if we take into account Springsteen's fame, the fact that even single streaming reproductions are monetized and the proceeds deriving from the songs used as soundtracks for films or TV series. An example above all is “Street of Philly”, song written by Springsteen in '93 for the film "Philadelphia", awarded with the Oscar for best song and 4 Grammy Awards.
Bruce Springsteen is just the latest name in an ever-growing list of great artists who decide to sell their production to record companies, enjoying the fruits of a long career. He was the forerunner Bob Dylan which in December 2020 sold its music catalog to Universal Music (Vivendi group) for about 300 million dollars. A year ago, the deal was defined as the music deal of the century. Last September Warner music bought the rights to the catalog of David Bowie. The same fate befell the repertoires of Paul Simon, Neil Young, Carole Bayer Sager and Tina Turner.
These types of operations have become more frequent during the pandemic and have their roots in the twenty-year crisis that the recording industry is facing, due to the decline in sales of physical records and the explosion of streaming and worsened with the Covid-19 by virtue of the suspension of large live concerts.
