Earlier this week, reports swirled that technology giant Samsung was reportedly meeting with Jay Z to buy his Tidal music streaming service.
Samsung has since come out and said it won’t be happening.
via Variety:
“The rumor of Samsung acquiring Tidal is not true,” said Samsung spokesperson, breaking the company’s silence on the matter. This comes after months of reports about conversations between the two companies.
Rumors about Samsung looking to acquire Tidal were first fueled by Tidal owner Jay Z stopping by Samsung’s campus to meet with the company’s executives last October. The New York Postreported last month that the two parties had picked up talks again.
Jay Z acquired Tidal for $56 million a little over a year ago. The streaming service has been struggling with management and marketing issues following the acquisition; it appointed its third CEO in nine months in December, and fired its COO and CFO earlier this month.
However, in recent months, Tidal has seen solid growth, thanks to a number of high-profile exclusives. Most recently, Kanye West released his new album “The Life of Pablo” exclusively on the service. And in January, Tidal released Rihanna’s “Anti” album days before other services,which led to 1 million users signing up for a trial of the service. Samsung participated in that promotion, leading many to suspect that bigger things were coming for the two companies.
Samsung itself has been struggling for some time to build a music offering that could compete with the likes of Apple Music and Spotify. Two years ago, Samsung launched a Pandora-like streaming service dubbed Milk Music exclusively to users of its devices. But now, all signs point to Milk Music being shuttered in the coming weeks, as Variety reported earlier Friday.
According to reports, Spotify is still interested.
