Forbes has reported that Bruce Springsteen is officially a billionaire, conservatively estimating his net worth to be around $US1.1 billion, which converts to roughly $AU1.65 billion.
The beloved singer-songwriter, who became the voice of the working class after releasing his 1975 breakout album Born to Run, admitted in his memoir that he didn’t enter a place of financial stability until the early ’80s.
Since then, his net worth steadily rose, but in 2021, it exploded after he sold his music catalogue to Sony for an estimated $500-550 million – the largest acquisition for a solo artist’s body of work.
A string of legendary artists have cashed-in their equity on their music catalogues.
Neil Young, Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, Paul Simon, the Beach Boys, Bob Dylan and many others have made millions (hundreds of millions in Dylan’s case) by turning over their publishing.
Ageing artists look to sell their music rights as a means of retirement or estate planning, especially as competition among record companies and other music investment companies have sent catalogue prices skyrocketing.
While music catalogues are valuable assets, managing them is challenging, cumbersome and time-consuming. Rather than burden heirs with the responsibility of managing decades worth of music, many legacy artists are opting to take the cash now with the knowledge that their new partners will have the expertise and incentive to optimise the value of the music over time.
The Boss is currently playing dates in Europe with his Springsteen and E Street Band 2024 tour before heading back to the US to make good on dates he rescheduled in 2023 while he recovered from peptic ulcer disease.
