When Jay-Z relaunched Tidal, he didn’t exactly do it alone as there were 15 artists in total, all of whom have an ownership stake in the company. Now while Tidal is billing itself to be a hi-fidelity music streaming service that plans to compensate artists fairly, it seems that it could potentially be in trouble no thanks to legal issues.So much so that half of Tidal’s founding artists could see their music pulled from the platform. According to a report from Bloomberg, Jay-Z was initially counting on an investment deal with Sprint to help cover some of the costs related to music licensing with Sony. However Sprint has since come forward and stated that their deal with Tidal is not “a financial investment or exclusive partnership.”
What this means is that unless Jay-Z can somehow find a new investor or raise the money himself to pay for the licensing costs, Sony’s artists will have no choice but to pull out from the service. These artists include Alicia Keys, Daft Punk, Jack White, Calvin Harris, J Cole, Usher, and even Jay-Z’s wifi and music sensation Beyonce.
It remains to be seen if Jay-Z will be able to overcome this, but this isn’t the first time that we have heard that Tidal isn’t doing as well as it should. Considering the massive lead that Spotify has over it, and let’s not forget Apple’s revamped music streaming service that will be announced at WWDC, Tidal appears to have its work cut out for them.