Jay Z Just Dropped $56 Million to Buy High-Res Audio Streaming Service TIDAL
If you haven’t heard of TIDAL, you will now. It positions itself as a rival to Spotify, Rdio, Pandora and all the others with its higher-quality audio stream. And now it’s owned by Jay Z. From Billboard.
Jay Z has set his sights on buying Aspiro, the Swedish parent company of two subscription streaming services, WiMP and TIDAL. The offer of 464 million Swedish krona, or $56.2 million, represents a 59.1 percent premium over yesterday’s closing share price. It was announced by Aspiro early this morning and has already been accepted. Trading of Aspiro stock was up 76 percent on the news this morning, to 0.08 per share.
The proposed acquisition is being made via the mogul’s Project Panther Bidco, a subsidiary of his S. Carter Enterprises, and is still subject to shareholder approval. A spokesperson said Panther’s “strategic ambition” for Aspiro is to expand and up-scale its technology and services.
This helps my theory that High-Res Audio will emerge as A Thing in 2015. We’ll see. Read on here. More comment can be found here.
