It’s still 2020 good people, so I’ll believe anything. However, after learning that Square, the digital payment processor, is talking about buying Tidal, the music streaming service, I thought the world was getting really strange. At first glance, this is a strange pairing, but after thinking about it for a long time, I can a kind of see.
A report in Bloomberg This week, Square CEO Jack Dorsey, who is also Twitter’s CEO, spoke with Jay-Z about buying Tidal, which the artist acquired in 2015, in an effort to diversify the digital payments company. The press, citing an unnamed source familiar with the situation, said negotiations could not lead to a deal.
Tidal describes himself as a streaming platform owned by artistsand is based on nearly two dozen renowned owners, including Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Calvin Harris, Coldplay, Kanye West, Madonna and Nicki Minaj, among others.
Per Bloomberg, Dorsey aspires to build Square into a company of “independent complementary services”. Square already offers its sellers a variety of different products and services, from online stores and delivery services to hardware and marketing at the point of sale.
Now, you see, all of these services make sense for a digital payment processor. I can see how a Square salesman who uses the hardware at the company’s point of sale and online store might also be interested in its marketing offerings. But it’s not immediately clear how a music streaming service fits into all of this.
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After I came across the idea repeatedly in my head, one of the no more reasonable The thing I came up with – and please tell me if you have any ideas – was that the Tidal acquisition could make it easier for Square sellers to play music in their units. (Looks like it is not as easy as pressing the game because, you guessed it, Copyright).
Another thing that crossed my mind was that the purchase could allow Square sellers to offer experiences such as free streaming concerts to their (socially remote) customers. According to him LinkedIn page, Tidal has broadcast live over 120 concerts since its inception. Bloomberg points out that it has offered other experiences, such as streaming Rientyna Fenty / Puma summer collection in 2016. This could be a good deal, given that we are still in a global pandemic and it is unlikely that we will be able to go to concerts, fashion shows or other events, as we have become accustomed to soon.
It is not known if one of these possibilities or any other is on the table. In addition to reporting on the discussions, the Bloomberg report did not include many additional details.
Finding a new purpose in life would probably be good for Tidal, who struggled to compete against Spotify and Apple Music. The last time he reported the number of paying subscribers, in 2016, he had only three millions. In comparison, Spotify said it has 144 million paying subscribers last September. Apple, in turn, which last reported subscribers paying for its service in 2019, reported that it has more than 60 million.
Although it’s still unclear whether Square and Tidal will eventually join, photos of Dorsey and Jay-Z in recent months – the first in Hamptons in August and then on the beach in Hawaii“Suddenly a completely different meaning.”
[Bloomberg]