Dr. Dre became the first billionaire of hip-hop thanks to Apple’s $3 billion acquisition of Beats Music and its accompanying over-priced headphone brand. Jay Z is pretty much the only big name rapper that hasn’t imitated Dre by slapped his name on headphones. Instead, he’s decided to do the next best thing and buy a high-def music startup.
Jay Z purchased the Scandinavian music streaming company Aspiro today, adding to his array of businesses that include clothing, sports bars, and a sports agency. The takeover cost Jay Z $56 million in an effort to take on the likes of Spotify, Beats Music, and the fiery music titan Neil Young.
Aspiro currently runs the ad-free music service WiMP, as well as Tidal’s high-definition streamer. The two services have similar features, giving music fans the ability curate playlist, find recommendations, and read artist interviews. WiMP is only available in Denmark, Germany, Norway, Poland, and Sweden. Tidal launched in the U.S. last year with over 25 million tracks in 16-bit FLAC format, priced at $20 per month.
Jay Z’s company, Project Panther Bidco, says it had been following the music startup for sometime, according to Reuters they believe “an innovative high-quality company with strong future growth potential”. Shares in Aspiro spiked 59 percent in early trading after the news broke that the Jigga Man is tooling and entering the music streaming war.
Jay Z hasn’t said how he plans to take on his West Coast rival with the new company, but if the 90’s taught me anything, it’s that this ends badly.
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
2 responses to “Jay Z takes aim at Dr. Dre with his own high-def music streamer”
The problem JayZ is going to have is to make Tidal Profitable. They have to charge more money due to Lossless instead of Lossy. While it probably does sound better, it’s more costly and there aren’t as many people that will pay the premium for the service. I don’t know if he had enough to invest into Tidal without getting others to dump hundreds of millions to see if he can make Tidal successful. Spotify just raised another $500 Million and Apple has almost $200 Billion in the bank earning interest, so Apple can certainly outlast all of these others.
jay-z did slap his name on headphones, roc nation. This is a complete waste of money for Jay-z. He should have gone in another direction.