Since the release of his first album in 1973, Bruce Springsteen has remained a constant in the music industry as an artist who embodied the working class people he grew up around. The Boss' portfolio, however, now says otherwise as the musician has officially been classified as a billionaire following the most recent estimates of his financial worth.
Working Class to Billionaire Class
Springsteen was classified as a billionaire by Forbes, via Variety, after the financial outlet's assessment of the musician's assets and came up with what it described as a “conservative” estimate. His reported estimate is around $1.1 billion, putting him at 2584 on Forbes' billionaire list.
A large chunk of this wealth believed to have come only in the last several years off the back of massive ticket sales and some even bigger business dealings.
The biggest was in 2021 when Springsteen sold his entire publishing and recorded-music catalogue to Sony Music for a total believed to be between $500 and $550 million. It was the third-biggest sale of a musician's catalogue of all-time, with the top spot being held by Queen, and second-biggest by a solo artist after Michael Jackson.
“I am one artist who can truly say that when I signed with Columbia Records in 1972, I came to the right place,” Springsteen said in a statement following the deal's closure. “During the last 50 years, the men and women of Sony Music have treated me with the greatest respect as an artist and as a person. I’m thrilled that my legacy will continue to be cared for by the Company and people I know and trust.”
Springsteen also had a highly-lucrative tour in 2023 that reportedly brought in $380 million in revenue, enough for Springsteen and the E Street Band to crack the top 20 highest-grossing concert tours of all time. Additionally, he is one of the best-selling musicians of all time with roughly 140 million records sold globally during his 50-plus year career.
Bruce Springsteen's Run
The success is a far cry from the young man who grew up in a working class neighborhood in Long Branch, New Jersey. His mother worked as a legal secretary and was considered the “breadwinner” of the family while his father worked a variety of jobs, such as being a bus driver, but struggled with mental health issues for most of Springsteen's life.
While Bruce Springsteen would begin performing for various bands starting in 1964, he would strike out on his own in the early 70s and start his own band in 1971 that would eventually form into the E Street Band, taking its name from a street in Belmar, New Jersey, where the band's keyboardist David Sancious's family lived. The group released its first two albums, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle in 1973, which were met with widespread acclaim but failed to find meaningful financial success.
That changed with the release of the group's third studio album Born to Run in 1975, which is considered to be Springsteen and the band's breakthrough album. It was off to the races from there as Springsteen and the E Street Band become one of the biggest musical acts in the U.S., most notably his seventh album Born in the U.S.A. is still considered his most successful album ever and cemented Springsteen's “superstar” status in music.
Follow Us
Subscribe
