Sprint Buys $200 Million Stake In Jay Z's Tidal
Jay Z is a man about his business, man. And he has removed most of his discography from Spotify in the interest of his business.
The co-owner of TIDAL and guest feature on the recently-released Frank Ocean track "Biking," has removed 12 studio albums from Spotify. T
According to a report by Billboard, only a handful of albums and singles (all collaborations) are currently available on Spotify's streaming service: Unfinished Business and Best of Both Worlds with R. Kelly; "N——s in Paris" with Kanye West; "Numb/Encore" with Linkin Park; "All the Way Up" with Fat Joe, Remy Ma, French Montana and Infared; "Clique" with Big Sean and Kanye); and "Dirt Off Your Shoulders" with Notorious B.I.G.
The move comes as news of TIDAL's subscription numbers was released. As Billboard writes:
"The self-proclaimed more artist-friendly service trails leaders Spotify (50 million subscribers as of last count), Apple Music (20 million as of last official count), and Amazon (never says, but when bundled with Amazon Prime could be well over 10 million). Tidal's subscription numbers are thought to be under 3 million and perhaps on par with competitors Deezer and Napster."
Three months ago Sprint bought a $200 million stake in TIDAL. The deal between the two companies provided Sprint's 45 million customers with "unlimited access" to exclusive artist content on the TIDAL platform.
Although it seemed as if a number of Jay Z's albums had also disappeared from Apple Music, those releases have since returned to the streaming service.
The way that Jay Z has handled the streaming of his music on other services that are not Tidal has resulted in some opposition. Music website Noisey reported on the removal of Jay's tracks, but faced some backlash in a tweet for the story when they referred to Jay Z as a "messy b**ch."
Messy? We think not. Strategic may be a better adjective to describe the mogul.
