Just in case you weren’t inundated with music streaming choices already, soon you’re going to have yet another few to pick from, now that one half of the most powerful couple in the music business is getting in on the action.
Project Panther, a company that is owned by Jay-Z’s S. Carter Enterprises, has made bid of 464 Swedish Krona (equivalent to a little over $56 million in U.S. dollars) to buy Swedish company Aspiro, it was revealed in a press release on Friday. Aspiro is the company behind two music-streaming services: WiMP and Tidal.
S. Carter, by the way, refers to Shawn Carter, a.k.a. Jay-Z’s real name.
The deal is not done yet, and has to be approved by Aspiro’s board of directors. It seems like pretty much a done deal, though, as the board has decided to already “unanimously recommend” that all shareholders accept the offer.
You may not have heard of WiMP, as it has only been made available in European markets so far, having launched in countries including Denmark, Germany, Norway, Poland and Sweden. Tidal, on the other hand is more well known, though still not a household name, having launched in the U.S. and the U.K. in 2014. Something tells me that you will be hearing a lot more about both services very soon.
Shareholders in Aspiro seem very happy with this turn of events, as the company’s stock rose over 59% in trading on Friday.
By getting into the music streaming businesses, Jay-Z is following in the footsteps of his fellow music mogul Dr. Dre. He, along with record producer Jimmy Iovine, together launched Beats Electronics, which made headphones and featured its own music streaming service. They sold the company to Apple for $3 billion last year.
In addition to the two streaming companies, Aspiro also operates RADR Music News, a video content platform for publishers.
With Jay-Z’s name behind them, it’s likely that WiMP and Tidal might both see some traction, but this is a really, really competitive space.
There are a lot of different streaming services out there that they will be going up against, and many heavy hitters. Not only the big dogs like Spotify and Pandora, but Apple with aforementioned Beats service, Deezer, Rdio and IHeartRadio. Google even has two separate music streaming services of its own: it unveiled Google Play Music All Access in 2013, then launched a YouTube streaming app in November.
Earlier this week Sony and Spotify teamed up to launch a new music streaming service on the PlayStation Network called PlayStation Music. And I’m sure there are plenty more that I’m forgetting to mention.
The point is, there really is no shortage of options in this space, and it will be interesting to watch how Jay-Z tries to differentiate his new acquisitions from the rest of the pack. Perhaps he might want to think about using them to release some exclusive content, perhaps from someone very close to him…
(Image source: abcnews.go.com)
