Jay Z alongside several Global music stars officially relaunched music streaming service – Tidal in press event in New York on May 30th. The formerly Scandinavian owned music streaming service was acquired by the rapper’s Project Panther Bidco company in a $54 million deal.
Tidal allows users stream music from smartphones, tablets and computers but it is all paid options unlike rival spotify which has a free option with ads supported. The standard fee Tidal charges $9.99 monthly for the regular version and $19.99 monthly for a more quality version (lossless FLAC format).
Reports suggests that the Blueprint Rapper has enlisted his wife – Beyoncé, Rihanna, Kanye West, Usher, DeadMau5, Calvin Harris, Nicki Minaj, Jason Aldean, Alicia Keys, Daft Punk, Jack White, Cold Play, Madonna and Arcade Fire as co-owners of the company. The music streaming service is being touted as a ‘whole new era’ to the industry and is intended to give artists more control over their content.
Tidal will turf it out with established companies in streaming services such as Spotify, Apple and Google. While Tidal has just 540,000 subscribers in 31 countries, Spotify has about 60 million subscribers (15 million of them paid ones); and the potential Apple and Beats Music collaboration coming up would also throw another established competitor in the streaming music services business.
For now it is still early days, Jay Z who is an entrepreneur, superstar, and multi billionaire to the core has weathered some storms in his career so far, let’s hope he can withstand the Tidal Wave when it hits for good or otherwise…
