Back in July, a report from The Wall Street Journal hinted that Apple was planning on buying out their rival in the music streaming scene, Tidal. Musician Kanye West even seemed to support the idea and encouraged Apple to purchase the platform (which is ironic considering that West doesn’t seem to be a fan of Apple Music).As exciting as it would be to see Apple grow Apple Music even larger by acquiring their rival, it seems that will not happen. According to a report from BuzzFeed News, Apple Music head and music industry veteran Jimmy Iovine pretty much shut the rumors down. Iovine told the publication, “We’re really running our own race. We’re not looking to acquire any streaming services.”
No doubt an acquisition of Tidal would bolster Apple’s music streaming efforts, assuming that they were to absorb Tidal’s users into Apple Music. Last we heard, which was last week during Apple’s iPhone event, Apple Music is currently home to about 17 million paid subscribers, a very impressive effort given how young the service is.
However this number pales in comparison to long-time player Spotify who recently boasted that they have 40 million paid subscribers. It will be interesting to see if Apple will be able to close the gap in the coming months/years, or if Spotify will continue to pull ahead for the foreseeable future.
Filed in . Read more about Apple Music, Music and Tidal.