
Tidal was launched in 2014 and purchased a year later by a consortium of artists, including Jay-Z, for $56 million. He'll now help lead our entire company, including Seller and the Cash App, as soon as the deal closes. I knew TIDAL was something special as soon as I experienced it, and I’m inspired to work with him. I’m grateful for Jay’s vision, wisdom, and leadership. Shares of Square were down nearly 7% in early trading Thursday following the announcement. Investors appeared less certain of the benefits. Moshe Katri, an analyst at Wedbush, said the deal is part of Square’s “ongoing strategy of building eco-systems around merchants/sellers and consumers.” In buying Tidal, Katri said Square can expand its user base to include artists, musicians and fans. “We’re going to start small and focus on the most critical needs of artists and growing their fanbases.” “Given what Square has been able to do for sellers of all sizes and individuals through Cash App, we believe we can now work for artists to see the same success for them, and us,” he added.
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Dorsey addressed the issue in a series of tweets on Thursday, “Why would a music streaming company and a financial services company join forces?!” The answer, he said, “comes down to a simple idea: finding new ways for artists to support their work.” Nonetheless, it’s a puzzling deal for a company known for its financial products. In a statement Thursday, Jay-Z said: “Jack and I have had many discussions about Tidal’s endless possibilities that have made me even more inspired about its future.”


The pair recently partnered on a bitcoin development fund and have been photographed together on vacation.
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The company has gone from offering mobile payments to providing a full suite of tools for small businesses, including an in-house bank launched earlier this week to provide business loans and deposit products to sellers who use its card reader and other point-of-sale services.īeyond that, it builds on the relationship between Dorsey and Jay-Z. It also further expands Square’s portfolio of services. The long-rumored deal offers an exit for Tidal, which has struggled to compete with larger rivals like Spotify. As part of the deal, Jay-Z will join Square’s board. In a press release, Square said it expects to pay $297 million in cash and stock for the stake. (SQ), the payments company founded and run by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, announced Thursday it has agreed to acquire a majority stake in Jay-Z’s Tidal platform. Pair Dorsey and Jay-Z, and maybe it comes a whole lot sooner.Jay-Z has 99 problems but figuring out a buyer for his struggling music streaming service is no longer one. All of a sudden, you're along for the ride, too.”ģLAU predicts something along those lines will come in “the next five to 10 years. “Maybe you find an artist you love before anyone else, and you can invest in their music”-as an NFT could allow someone to do-“and then you've invested in The Weeknd before The Weeknd blows up. Why buy an NFT? “Imagine you're a fan, and you want to invest in music,” explains 3LAU. Maybe he sticks to sheparding other artists toward the technology.

He sold off a variety of different types of NFTs, some of which included access to new songs and digital copies of his 2017 Ultraviolet album.Ī musician’s NFT can do any number of things: sell an album, drop a single or strike a more complicated bargain-perhaps selling off a cut of future earnings for the immediate investment. And three days prior, the electronic dance music star 3LAU finished a $11.7 million NFT auction, the biggest sale of the tokens yet. (And it is undeniably a boom: Nearly $50 million of these NFTs are trading hands each week, some $180 million in the past two months.) A day ago, the band Kings of Leon announced they planned to release a new album through an NFT sale, something no other artist has done. Musicians are at the forefront of the boom. They can do it without giving up a lick to an agent, a lawyer or a record label. These tokens allow them to sell digital media-maybe an illustration, maybe an entire album-at prices never before possible and collect a cut of secondary sales too. To them, NFTs are manna from a coded heaven. If only there was a way to do that using a sophisticated financial technology, precisely the type Dorsey and Jay-Z might find particularly interesting.Īnd this is how the world could end up with Jay-Z NFTs.Īn NFT, or a non-fungible token, is a surging type of cryptoasset attracting all sorts of artists.
