Jay-Z’s Tidal Gets A $200m Boost From American Telecom Giant, Sprint

Last year it looked like Apple was going to buy Jay-Z’s Tidal in a bid to bring some top competition to Spotify which still rules the music streaming market but somehow they didn’t and we don’t know why. But Tidal has a new investor and that’s American telecom giant Sprint. Sprint acquired a 33 percent stake in Tidal which analysts valued at $200m which would mean that Tidal is actually worth like $600m.

Jay-Z and his artist partners will continue to run the day to day operations of the streaming service as Sprint’s CEO Marcelo Claure will join Tidal’s Board of Directors.

The statement read;

TIDAL is a global, experiential, entertainment platform built for fans, directly from artists around the world. Members of TIDAL enjoy unmatched exclusively curated content that directly connect artists with their fans in multiple ways. TIDAL is available in more than 52 countries, with a more than 42.5 million song catalog and 140,000 high-quality videos.

The innovative TIDAL platform, combined with Sprint’s award-winning reliable network and best value for unlimited data, talk and text, will deliver a first-of-its-kind experience for music fans.

“Jay saw not only a business need, but a cultural one, and put his heart and grit into building TIDAL into a world-class music streaming platform that is unrivaled in quality and content,” said Claure. “The passion and dedication that these artist-owners bring to fans will enable Sprint to offer new and existing customers access to exclusive content and entertainment experiences in a way no other service can.”

With such a partnership, Sprint can now bring Tidal’s services to its 45 million customers exclusively which is a boost for the streaming service which says it has about 3 million customers and 1.3 million of whom are paying. Tidal has leveraged in exclusivity to make itself more attractive to investors and users and when you have artists like Beyoncé, Kanye West and Rihanna at some point releasing albums exclusively on your platform, you are bound to gain some attention and that attention has now fetched the growing music streaming service $200m in investment from a telecom giant.