Bruce Springsteen fans will be able to stream all 12 tracks of the rocker’s new High Hopes album starting on Sunday — if they’re in the United States, that is.
Broadcaster CBS said on Thursday it will host the pre-release at cbs.com/springsteen ahead of a January 12 episode of its legal drama The Good Wife featuring three songs from the record.
But a CBS spokeswoman said: “streaming of the album is restricted to the United States only” — leaving fans abroad to cool their heels until High Hopes gets its general release on January 14.
Some fans already have The Boss’s 18th studio album — his first since Wrecking Ball in 2012 — on their digital players after it briefly popped up on Amazon.com as an MP3 download last weekend.
Springsteen’s label is Columbia Records, a Sony Music Entertainment subsidiary formerly owned by CBS that was behind the surprise online release of Beyonce’s fifth album on December 13.
Beyonce is currently spending its third week atop the Billboard 200 album chart, having sold more than 1.3 million copies.
High Hopes is a mix of cover versions, studio outtakes and re-recordings which Springsteen — who has concerts upcoming in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand — has called “music I always felt needed to be released.”
