It’s still personal 2020, so I’ll believe anything. However, after learning that Square, the digital payment processor, is supposed to be talking to buy Tidal, the music streaming service, I thought the world was starting really weird. At first glance, it’s a strange pairing, but after thinking about it for a long time, I can kind of Look.
A report in Bloomberg this week says Square CEO Jack Dorsey, who is also the CEO of Twitter, spoke with Jay-Z about buying Tidal, which the artist acquired in 2015, in an effort to diversify the digital payments company. The agency, which cited an unidentified source familiar with the situation, said the talks may not result in a transaction.
Tidal describes himself as a streaming platform owned by the artist, and has nearly two dozen top-tier owners, including Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Calvin Harris, Coldplay, Kanye West, Madonna and Nicki Minaj, among others.
Per Bloomberg, Dorsey aspires to transform Square into a company made up of “independent complementary services”. Square already offers Its vendors offer a variety of different products and services, from online stores and delivery services to point-of-sale and marketing hardware.
Now see, all of these services make sense for a digital payment processor. I can see how a Square salesperson who uses the company’s point-of-sale hardware and online store may also be interested in your marketing offerings. But it is not immediately clear how a music streaming service fits all of this.
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After going over the idea several times in my head, one of the only reasonable The things I made up – and please let me know if you have any more ideas – was that the acquisition of Tidal could make it easier for Square salespeople to play music in their stores. (Apparently, it is not as easy as pressing play because of, you guessed it, Copyright)
Another thing that crossed my mind was that the acquisition could allow Square sellers to offer experiences like free shows via streaming to their (socially distant) customers. According to your LinkedIn Page, Tidal has broadcast over 120 shows live since its inception. Bloomberg points out that it also offered other experiences, such as streaming Rihanna’s Fenty / Puma summer collection in 2016. This may be a good offer, considering that we are still in a global pandemic and we are not likely to be able to go to shows, fashion shows or other events as we used to so soon.
Whether one of these possibilities, or any other, is at stake, is unknown. In addition to reporting on the existence of negotiations, the Bloomberg report did not include many additional details.
Finding a new purpose in life would probably be good for Tidal, who has been struggling to compete with Spotify and Apple Music. The last time he reported his paying subscriber numbers, in 2016, he had only three million. In comparison, Spotify said it had 144 million paying subscribers last september. Apple, for its part, which last reported paying subscribers for its service in 2019, said it had more than 60 million.
Although it remains unclear whether Square and Tidal will come together at the end, the photos of Dorsey and Jay-Z in recent months – first in Hamptons in august and then on the beach in Hawaii– suddenly, it takes on a totally different meaning.
[Bloomberg]