A $550 Million Springsteen Deal? It’s Glory Days for Catalog Sales.

Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Tina Turner and others have all sold rights to their music for eye-popping prices. Here’s why.

In 1972, a struggling New Jersey musician hustled into Manhattan for an audition at Columbia Records, using an acoustic guitar borrowed from his former drummer.

“I had to haul it ‘Midnight Cowboy’-style over my shoulder on the bus and through the streets of the city,” the rocker, Bruce Springsteen, later recalled in his memoirs.

Half a century later, he can afford plenty of guitars. Last week Sony, which now owns Columbia, announced that it acquired Springsteen’s entire body of work — his recordings and his songwriting catalog — for what two people briefed on the deal said was about $550 million.