Jay-Z Nears Deal For Streaming Company

Not to be outdone by Dr. Dre, who made a windfall when Apple purchased Beats last year, rapper and business mogul Jay-Z has bid for the Swedish streaming company Aspiro. The company owns two streaming services offering audio and video called WiMP and TIDAL.

TIDAL has been mentioned on this blog a few times already, since it's a premium service that offers CD quality streams. The service was only launched in the US late last year, and has about 500,000 subscribers at $19.95 per month.

The surprising part of the deal is that Jay-Z's subsidiary company Project Panther Bidco bid only $56.2 million for Aspiro, which seems like a steal compared to what similar services are priced at.

Aspiro's board of directors has approved the deal, and the only thing holding it up now is approval from the shareholders.

I think this is a brilliant step by Jay-Z. It's only a matter of time until all streaming services have at least one hi-res tier, and TIDAL is really leading the pack at this at the moment. Not only that, the price is very reasonable considering the infrastructure and subscribers included. Aspiro looks to be cash-strapped, so it gives the founders an exit strategy while breathing new life into the service.

I don't know if TIDAL will survive when Google's Music Key and Apple's rejuvenated Beats Music launch, but right now it's one of the few streaming services with something unique to offer.

TIDAL Starts The Streaming Race To The Top

While Spotify may be the current king of the hill when it comes to interactive music streaming, and Apple and Google threaten to enter the fray in a big way, a new kid on the block may have changed the game for everyone. This week the Swedish service WiMP launched its new TIDAL service and from here on out, streaming music is not going to be the same.

So what does TIDAL have that the other services don’t already? Real CD quality audio for one, with 44.1kHz/16 bit tracks streamed in either FLAC or ALAC compression formats, depending upon the device you’re listening on. TIDAL is also the first streaming service to be able to stream this level of audio quality to a mobile device, with apps available for both iPhone and Android.

To be fair, you can also get roughly the same sound quality with the new Deezer Elite tier as well, but that only works if you have an Sonos audio playback system available, which means that at least at the moment, it’s not available to the masses.

As good as TIDAL sounds, the downside is that it costs $19.95 a month, which is way outside the comfort zone of most music consumers. For audiophiles, it’s probably a no-brainer, but I don’t think you’ll see the average music lover subscribing given what’s available for a lot less or even free. For some, sound quality is just not that important. Read more on Forbes.

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Consumers More Willing To Pay For Streaming

Streaming music is coming to the forefront of music delivery more and more, and much of that can be attributed to the hype of new services like Apple's iRadio, Google Play and even Beats project "Daisy," but also because subscriptions to both Spotify and Pandora keep rising. The good news for these services is that people in some countries are now more willing to pay for streaming services than they were before.

A new survey sponsored by WiMP found that the percentage of willing payers has risen to 48% from 33% in Norway, 30% from 14% in Denmark, and 28% from 25% in Germany.

On the surface that sounds great for streaming, except for the fact that in Sweden (which has had paid streaming the longest, and streaming accounts for 90% of recorded music revenue), that number has decreased from 36% to 33%.

The Swedish data makes you wonder why it's going in the opposite direction. Are they unhappy with the services they have? Will the trend change with the introduction of new and potentially better services? Is there an issue with the amount being charged?

None of these questions were addressed by the survey, so unfortunately only part of the streaming picture is being painted.

That said, music streaming is now a boulder rolling down a hill that's picking up speed, and music is going to change substantially because of it in the future.

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