Square acquires a majority stake in Jay-Z's streaming service Tidal for $297M; Jay-Z will join Square's board
What did Jay-Z and Jack Dorsey talk about when they went yachting around the Hamptons together last summer? Perhaps only Beyoncé knows. — Maybe now we do, too.
New York TimesKatherine Rosman
Context & Ripple Effects
Tidal began as Jay-Z’s bid to challenge Beats and Spotify after buying Tidal and WiMP for $56 million in 2015. It later drew reported interest from Apple and Rhapsody, marking it as a strategically contested streaming asset rather than a settled independent business.
Square’s previously reported talks to acquire Tidal have now produced a controlling investment and a board role for Jay-Z. The transaction makes Square the central owner in Tidal’s next phase while retaining Jay-Z inside its governance structure.
First-order effects
Square becomes Tidal’s controlling shareholder, while Jay-Z joins Square’s board as part of the $297 million transaction.
Tidal’s strategic decisions now sit under Square’s majority ownership rather than solely with the service’s original Jay-Z-led ownership group.
Second-order effects
Tidal’s competitive posture against the services it was created to challenge, including Beats and Spotify, shifts from an artist-led challenger to a Square-controlled streaming business.
The deal makes Square the key counterparty for any future strategic discussions around Tidal, after earlier reported talks involving Apple and Rhapsody.
Third-order effects
If technology companies continue to seek ownership of music-streaming distribution, Tidal’s path—from Jay-Z’s acquisition through reported interest from larger platforms to Square control—points to streaming services becoming strategic assets for firms beyond traditional music owners.
The trend: Music-streaming platforms are increasingly treated as strategic acquisition assets by technology companies seeking a position in digital distribution.
Square is acquiring a majority ownership stake in TIDAL through a new joint venture, with the original artists becoming the second largest group of shareholders, and JAY-Z joining the Square board. Why would a music streaming company and a financial services company join forces?!
The (stated) premise of Tidal was that people would use it because artists that were owners would provide it with exclusive music. But all of the artists who started out there eventually faced reality and streamed on Spotify, Apple Music etc.
This would be weird if Square was buying a music streaming service that people used. But it's much weirder: It's a publicly traded financial services company buying a failed music streaming company. https://twitter.com/...
Plenty of people on the “Square buying Tidal is dumb” side, but I'll be on the other end. Could it be a mistake? Sure. Is the deal relationship-based? Sure, many are. But Square has done incredible things for small merchants, & for everyday people w/ Cash, so why not artists?
this tweet is funnier if you pretend there's no reply thread and jack is just baffled and miffed as to why his company bought tidal https://twitter.com/...
for a big company to create an entirely new center of gravity inside, you need a forcing function. with this lens, and the growing need to outfit the creator economy with financial tools, this seems a logical step for Square. https://twitter.com/...
No idea what this is really about, but worth noting that Tidal already pays artists a penny-per-stream, the same “impossible” demand @UMAW_ is asking of Spotify... https://twitter.com/...
YES! Asking artists on your app to only make money from streams when you have a direct relationship to their listeners is insane! Glad @jack sees the vision. https://twitter.com/...
Jack went so deep into the creator economy with Twitter the past six months it leaked into Square 😱 A great acquisition that will 10x everything Square's been doing with consumer user acquisition. Not outrageous to think he merges SQ and TWTR at some point... https://twitter.com/…
Square acquiring TIDAL to focus on new ways for artists to monetize is going to be seen as the watershed moment of the creator economy. We're tilting away from platforms capturing all the value to the people creating the content doing so directly from fans or indirectly via ads h…
this thread is moderately compelling, and I like the bigness of vision tbh also music economics suck so, making them better sounds good https://twitter.com/...