Springsteen Downloads To Begin With First South Africa Gig

It won’t be long before you can download entire Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band concerts from the upcoming “High Hopes” tour. However, there is at least one hoop you’ll have to jump through in order to acquire the recordings.

Photo: John Minchillo/Invision/AP

Performing at the Stand Up for Heroes event at Madison Square Garden in New York.

The idea is simple enough. Beginning with Springsteen’s Jan. 26 concert in Cape Town, South Africa, you’ll be able to download the show approximately 48 hours after the final encore.

But you won’t be able to download the music to your hard drive. Instead, you’ll need to purchase a special USB wristband that will be available from the venues as well as online. Wristband owners will then be able to download one show of their choosing.

Fans were hoping that with this week’s release of Springsteen’s new album, High Hopes, that The Boss would announce North American tour dates. So far the only date on these shores is Springsteen & E Street’s New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival gig set for May 3.

However, Springsteen did talk about the upcoming concert downloads, telling NPR.org that “that everything you do is recorded now.”

“We came from the polar opposite,” Springsteen told NPR.org. “We started out as being very, very controlling. Now it’s just a different playing field and so it’s exciting: We have our little website and we’ve been throwing some things [up] from the last tour. If there was a great performance that night, somebody can mix it quickly. … And suddenly, we caught a version of ‘New York City Serenade’ from Rome that I was just so glad we had, you know? It was one of those things like it was just a perfect night; we had a string section and the guys played it beautifully. And when I saw it, I said, ‘I’m so glad this exists.’ And it wouldn’t exist if we weren’t thinking about getting it out that way and doing those things. So I’m looking forward to expanding and using more of that in the future and hopefully our fans will enjoy it and it’ll give us another canvas to paint on.”

Click here for the entire NPR.org interview.