Bruce Springsteen finally sells masters and publishing catalogue to Sony for $500M

In what could be the biggest deal in music ever for an individual artist’s entire body of work, Bruce Springsteen has sold the masters of his full catalogue to Sony Music. 

As reported by Billboard, the New Jersey rocker’s entire catalogue, as well as the coinciding music publishing rights, have transferred to Sony Music Publishing in a combined deal worth around $500 million. Springsteen’s catalogue is huge – it contains over 300 songs, 20 studio albums, 23 live albums, 7 EPs and lots more.

Over his five decade career, the musician had released his records through the Sony imprint Columbia Records. He was actually granted ownership of his earlier works in the late 80s and 90s as an incentive to re-sign with the label back then.

It was first revealed last month that Springsteen was in discussions to sell the rights to all of his music to Sony Music. He was also believed to be shopping around his publishing catalogue then, which was under Universal Music Publishing Group.

Although representatives for Springsteen, Sony Music, and Sony Music Publishing didn’t respond to requests for comment at the time, talks between the groups had reportedly been taking place for several months prior to November.

Springsteen is one of the most successful artists of the past five decades, with 65.5 million album sales in the U.S.. Billboard estimated that his album catalogue garnered around $15 million in revenue last year, a huge figure. His publishing catalogue also reportedly  rakes in around $7.5 million yearly.

As one of the most consistent touring artists too, concerts are a big money maker for Springsteen: he earned more than $840 million touring in just the last decade alone, between 2010 and 2019, according to Pollstar.

This new deal arrives one year after Universal Music Publishing Group purchased Bob Dylan’s extensive publishing catalog for more than $300 million. In 2019, the master rights to Taylor Swift’s first six albums were sold for over $300 million as well.

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Check out ‘Dancing in the Dark’ by Bruce Springsteen:

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.