by Felix Richter, Statista.com
Tlelve months after the launch of Apple Music, Apple is reportedly in talks to acquire Tidal.
The competing music streaming service, owned by rapper and entrepreneur Jay Z, was re-launched in April 2015 and is one of the few services to offer lossless streaming to audiophiles. Before the re-launch, Tidal’s parent company Aspiro had been acquired by a Jay Z-owned company for $56 million in January 2015.
As of March 2016, Tidal had 3 million paid subscribers, as our chart below shows. Considering the fact that Apple Music has more than 15 million subscribers and is growing at a much quicker rate than Tidal, it won’t be latter’s subscriber base that Apple is reportedly after. However, the service has two things going for it that might make a good addition to Apple Music: First of all, there’s Tidal’s exclusive content. Jay Z smartly uses his name and connections within the music industry to make exclusive deals with high-profile artists he’s friends with (or even married to). Secondly, Tidal’s lossless streaming technology could be of interest to Apple. After all, the company will reportedly ditch the traditional headphone jack on future iPhones to allow for, among other things, better quality music output.
It may not seem like a match made in heaven but, considering Apple’s $200+ billion war chest, it may not be the worst idea to shell out a tiny fraction of that cash to get rid of a competitor and use its assets to improve Apple Music.
This chart shows the number of worldwide paying subscribers of music streaming services.
You will find more statistics at Statista.
