Apple opens talks to acquire Jay Z's Tidal

Apple is allegedly in talks to acquire Tidal, a streaming-music service run by rapper and business mogul Jay Z. Buying Tidal would give Apple Music one less competitor in the streaming music space.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the news came after various reports that Tidal has been shopping for potential buyers, including holding talks last year with Napster, the company formally called Rhapsody. According to unnamed sources, Apple is exploring the idea of bringing on Tidal to bolster its Apple Music service because of Tidal’s strong ties to popular artists such as Kanye West, Rihanna and Madonna.

Terms of the potential deal aren’t known.

Jay-Z bought the service in March 2015 for $56 million from Swedish company Aspiro. He launched the service under the brand Tidal a month later. He has given 19 famous artists and bands small stakes in Tidal and promised each millions of dollars worth of marketing, according to people familiar with the matter.

A Tidal spokesman said Tidal executives had not held talks with Apple.

Spotify still remains the largest service with 30 million subscribers.

Tidal, meanwhile, doubled its subscriber base in the last six months, from 1 million to just over 3 million, according to CEO Jeff Toig, largely on the strength of its artist exclusives with the likes of West and Beyonce

An Apple spokesman declined to comment. Tidal representatives have also kept mum about the supposedly on going talks.

Source: The Wall Street Journal.