Square, the financial services company run by Twitter co-founder and chief executive Jack Dorsey, is buying Tidal, the streaming music service founded by rapper Jay-Z, according to multiple reports.
Under the terms of the $297 million deal, Tidal's superstar co-owners, who include Rihanna, Beyonce and Madonna, will keep their stakes and become the second biggest group of stakeholders. Jay-Z will move to Square's board of directors.
"I said from the beginning that Tidal was about more than just streaming music, and six years later, it has remained a platform that supports artists at every point in their careers," Revolt quoted the the billionaire rapper in a Twitter comment.
In his own tweets, Dorsey wrote: "New ideas are found at intersections, and we believe there's a compelling one between music and the economy," as per PitchFork.
Tidal, the high-fidelity audio and video streaming service, was founded in Norway in 2014 before it was sold to a consortium of artists led by Jay-Z the following year for $56 million.
According to Verge, Tidal quickly experienced problems, though, failing to secure exclusive content or attract subscribers to compete with the likes of Spotify.
Tidal secured a $200 million funding from Sprint in 2017 but its subscriber growth stalled after one year. Tidal reportedly had around 3 million paying customers that year, compared with Spotify's 20 million for the same period.
Jay-Z's deal with Square is his second in as many weeks after he sold 50% of his stake in Armand de Brignac champagne company to LVMH, the luxury goods company. While conditions of the deal were not disclosed, Forbes values the brand at around $630 million.
While Tidal has carved out its own niche, offering more than 70 million songs and 250,000 high-quality videos, the global market is dominated by Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music, according to The Guardian.
