The streaming service of rapper Jay-Z gets a new owner with the company Square from Twitter boss Jack Dorsey.
The music service Tidal, which wants to score points with higher streaming quality against Spotify and Apple Music, is taken over by the payment company Square for 297 million dollars. Behind this is Twitter boss Jack Dorsey, who founded Square during a break, is now at the top of both companies. Tidal owner Jay-Z will join Square's board of directors as part of the deal, the company announced on Thursday.
Twitter boss argues the purchase
Dorsey himself, in a series of tweets, raised the obvious question of how a streaming service and a financial services company fit together. His answer: It's about new ways in which musicians can earn money with their work. Square has created new opportunities for small retailers with its smartphone and tablet POS system – and the experience could also be useful in the music industry, argued Dorsey.
It comes down to a simple idea: finding new ways for artists to support their work. New ideas are found at the intersections, and we believe there's a compelling one between music and the economy. Making the economy work for artists is similar to what Square has done for sellers.
– jack (@jack) March 4, 2021
“We will work on completely new listening experiences to bring the fans closer together”. It is also about a simple integration of the sales of fan merchandise, modern tools for cooperation and additional revenue streams.
Tidal was started in 2014 by a Norwegian company, the following year Jay-Z and several other stars took over the streaming provider with the idea of creating a music service that belongs to the artists themselves. The other artists involved in Tidal should keep their shares, it said. Square pays the equivalent of around 247 million euros in a mixture of cash and stocks.
Also focus on crypto
Dorsey and Jay-Z already started a Bitcoin fund together in February, which is supposed to finance projects with the cryptocurrency, initially with a focus on development teams in Africa and India. The third largest cryptocurrency in the world, Cardano, could also play a role in the Twitter boss's crypto ambitions.
The organization behind Cardano is about to announce a huge project with an African state. Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson recently sparked such rumors in a video in which he alluded to little birds that would soon be twittering exciting news. Many crypto and Cardano fans interpreted this statement as an indication that Twitter or Twitter boss Dorsey has big plans for Cardano as well as Bitcoin.
