Bruce Springsteen has spent decades singing about working-class Americans, but his own children won’t be inheriting the crown jewels of his billion-dollar empire when The Boss finally takes his last bow. The rock legend may have built a fortune that would make most corporate executives blush, but his offspring will only receive cash — not a single note from the catalog that made him a cultural titan.
The Boss and His Heirs
The inheritance situation stems from Springsteen’s massive 2021 decision to sell his entire music catalog to Sony for an estimated $500 to $600 million. When the New Jersey icon eventually passes, his children will inherit proceeds from that sale along with other assets, but the actual rights to “Born to Run,” “Thunder Road,” and his legendary discography remain firmly in Sony’s corporate hands, according to the New York Times.
They will not get any money from his music because of the sale.
Speaking with the Times in 2017, according to People, Springsteen explained his children’s peculiar relationship with his fame.
The rock star had his first child at age 40, and his kids developed their own musical tastes entirely separate from their father’s influence. They remained remarkably unimpressed by his status, showing blank expressions whenever someone mentioned his song titles. This indifference created space for Evan James, Jessica Rae, and Samuel Ryan to forge their own identities away from their father’s enormous shadow.
The financial picture surrounding Springsteen’s wealth tells a complicated story.
Forbes pegged his net worth at $1.2 billion following the catalog sale, officially placing him in the billionaire musician club.
But The Boss pushed back hard during a Telegraph interview, insisting the numbers don’t tell the full story.
“I’m not a billionaire. I wish I was, but they got that real wrong. I’ve spent too much money on superfluous things,” he said.
Celebrity Net Worth settled on a more conservative estimate of $750 million. Springsteen maintains he’s earned his good fortune through relentless work, but warned that making money the ultimate goal is where many successful people lose their way.
The catalog sale made cold financial sense for someone in his 70s facing mortality. His heirs would have faced crushing tax burdens upon his passing, likely forcing them to sell anyway. By selling while alive, Springsteen paid a lower capital gains rate instead of a steeper income tax on annual royalties.
The timing proved prescient from a business standpoint.
According to Billboard, Springsteen just wrapped one of the most lucrative tours in rock history, with his 2023-2025 run alongside the E Street Band grossing $729.7 million while moving nearly 5 million tickets. Across his entire career, he’s generated close to $2.3 billion in ticket sales, making him only the fifth artist to crack that threshold.
Yet for all his commercial success, Springsteen has never shied from political combat, particularly when conservative leaders try claiming him as one of their own.
During a May 2025 concert in Manchester, England, Springsteen unleashed a blistering critique of the Trump administration, calling it corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous before accusing officials of taking sadistic pleasure in harming American workers. Trump responded on Truth Social, dismissing Springsteen as highly overrated.
This wasn’t Springsteen’s first rodeo with Republican presidents misappropriating his working-class anthems. Back in 1984, Ronald Reagan tried wrapping himself in Springsteen’s popularity during a New Jersey campaign stop, praising him as an embodiment of American dreams.
Springsteen responded during a Pittsburgh concert by sarcastically wondering which album Reagan preferred, saying it definitely wasn’t “Nebraska.”
The following night, he delivered an even sharper rebuke from the stage.
“There’s something really dangerous happening to us out there now. We’re slowly getting split up into two different Americas,” he told the crowd, according to Salon, “Things are being taken away from the people that need them and given to the people that don’t. There’s a promise getting broken.”
As for his children, politics aside, they’ll presumably watch these battles from the same comfortable distance they’ve maintained throughout his career, eventually inheriting substantial wealth if not the music itself.