BROOOOCE BOOT: Despite Sony Music’s legal battle...

BROOOOCE BOOT: Despite Sony Music’s legal battle to stop a small British record label from releasing an album of Bruce Springsteen studio outtakes and unreleased songs from his pre-Columbia Records days, bootlegs of the tapes have already hit U.S. shores.

The British label sent out advance tapes to the press. Within the last week, the collection, titled “The Prodigal Son,” turned up at several independent record stores in New York and Los Angeles.

Peter Howard, editor/publisher of the CD collector’s newsletter ICE, says that “because of the advance publicity,” the new Springsteen disc has the potential for 15,000 in sales. “That’s much better than the average bootleg,” Howard says.

Representatives of Sony and of Springsteen had no comment.