Jay-Z sells TIDAL for $350 Million USD

JAY -Z makes a profit with his investment in 2015 selling to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey

Acclaimed musician and businessman Jay Z has been creating an empire through various investments within the music industry and outside. One of which is TIDAL a music streaming platform promising to provide high fidelity sound, hi-def video quality, along with expertly curated playlists and original content. 2015 Jay-z acquired TIDAL formally know as Aspiro for $56 million in a partnership with several artists, including Beyonce, Rihanna, Kanye West, Madonna, Alicia Keys, Calvin Harris, Chris Martin and others. 

“We didn’t like the direction music was going and thought maybe we could get in and strike an honest blow and if the very least we did was make people wake up and try to improve the free paid system, and promote fair trade, then it would be a win for us anyway.”

JAY-Z Quote from the guardian 

Concerns began to rise after some of the biggest names in music declared TIDAL would be the salvation of the industry, this is not quite how things worked out. The app had dropped out of the iPhone top 700 downloads chart and critics had some harsh things to say about the company. 

American music industry analyst and critic Bob  Lefsetz commented on why TIDAL had failed to top the download charts. 

“People are cheap. They love their money more than their favourite artists, never forget it. Now if Tidal had a free tier … But it doesn’t. It can’t afford to lose that much money. Just because Jay Z is a famous musician he expects all of his fans to pony up 10 bucks a month? Raw insanity.”

Bob Lefsetz

Despite the concerns and criticism, JAY-Z stuck with it and gained a good return on his investments through selling to square inc owned by the CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey for 350 million USD. Through this agreement, Dorsey attains 80% ownership of TIDAL along with licensing deals with the major record labels and all artists and owners already with TIDAL will remain with the company.