Tidal Reports $28 Million in Losses
Mo' money, mo' streaming options, mo' problems, especially if you're Jay Z.
Even with some of the year's biggest albums—Kanye West's The Life of Pablo, Rihanna's ANTI and Beyonce's Lemonade to name a few—dropping on Jay Z's curated streaming service, Tidal is still losing money. The Wall Street Journal reports today (Sept. 13) that Tidal's parent company Aspiro had a loss of $28 million (about 239 million Swedish kronor) in 2015. It was also reported that Aspiro struggled to make payments on time last year with the company owing $438,000 in outstanding bills.
Jay Z purchased Tidal in March of 2015 for $56 million. That same month, Jigga Man enlisted a slew of celebrity friends from all genres of music to publicly announce Tidal's relaunch and sign the artist manifesto. The aim of Tidal, according to Jay, is to put more residuals in the pockets of the artists, producers, songwriters and publishers themselves. Two months after the announcement, Jay celebrated the launch with a rare Roc-A-Fella reunion show in NYC. By October of 2015, to celebrate 1 million new subscribers to the service, Jay once again gathered his best contacts for a Tidal X 10:20 Festival in Brooklyn, N.Y.
But Tidal's former owners didn't make the sale with a clean break. The New York rapper sued Tidal's former owners for giving him misleading subscriber numbers at the time of purchase.
Music fans nearly thought the streaming war was over back in June when The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple was in talks with Tidal about a possible purchase. Among competitors like Spotify and Soundcloud, Apple and Tidal have undoubtedly been the most aggressive when it comes to premiering exclusives this year. Apple was the first to premiere Frank Ocean's highly anticipated Blonde and Drake's double-platinum Views. Travis Scott's Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight just hit No. 1 on Billboard, making it the sixth No. 1 Apple Music exclusive so far this year.
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