Jay Z wins, again. A $56.2 million bid made him the proud owner of high fidelity music and video streaming service TIDAL, which he purchased via the S. Carter Enterprises company, and is now fully integrated with Norwegian music platform WiMP.
The Brooklyn rapper-turned-mogul’s offer initially saw pushback from shareholders, but the company announced on March 23 that the two entities will go by TIDAL after giving his deal the green light 13 days prior.
TIDAL could potentially shake up the market place, as its premium service offers stellar audio quality and streams at more than four times the bit speed of other competitors. Not to mention that it dons a library of 25 million tracks.
Apps available for iOS and Android phones and tablets and a web player will have 75,000 accessible music videos. TIDAL will also have a section of curated editorial content “by experienced music journalists and industry experts,” Billboard reports.
Launched in 2011, WiMP was in direct competition with Spotify, but was unable to contend. Despite this, corporate parent Aspiro, a Swedish company, in it’s last corporate filing, lists WiMP as having 512,000 paid subscribers.
A press release announcing the TIDAL partnership also stated that there are integration agreements in the works with more than 30 audio brands including Sonos and Anthem.
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Photo: YouTube
