Apple In Talks To Buy Jay Z-Owned Tidal Streaming Service (9to5mac.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple is in talks to acquire the Jay Z owned streaming service, Tidal. 9to5Mac reports: "While specific details are unclear at this point, Apple acquiring Tidal would give it an incredible leg up when it comes to negotiating for exclusive streaming rights. Tidal is currently owned by Jay Z and a variety of other artists, including Kanye West, Beyonce, Chris Martin, Jack White, and many more. Negotiations between Apple and Jay Z are reportedly still early and 'may not result in a deal,' according to the report. Apple is interested in Tidal because of its strong ties to artists, many of which are owners. Tidal has secured the exclusive streaming rights to a handful of notable albums in recent months, including Beyonce's Lemonade and Kanye West's The Life of Pablo." Earlier this year, a report claimed that Samsung, Google and Spotify had all considered buying the streaming service.

Comments

Or....

[Anonymous Coward]

Tidal, desparate for a sale, release rumours that its in talks to be bought with someone with deep pockets, in order to motivate someone with deeper pockets and poor impulse control.

Re: Or....

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone alert Bachmanity Capital!

Re: Or....

[Anonymous Coward]

There are few companies with deeper pockets than Apple. I can think of only one middle eastern company that has more money.

4 easy steps

[gamenfo]

This seems like a perfect strategy for a group of musicians mad that apple / spotify / etc are all not making them enough money.

1. Start a streaming service
2. Release exclusive albums
3. Wait to be bought
4. PROFIT!

Re:4 easy steps

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally figured out the gnomes forgotten step!

Re:4 easy steps

[Swampash]

Correction:

2. Have the exclusive streaming rights to Prince's catalog in the year that he dies

Re:4 easy steps

[AmazingRuss]

CHA CHING!

Kanye

[Anonymous Coward]

What will Kanye say next? lol.

Re: Kanye

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck Kanye.

Re: Kanye

[Anonymous Coward]

Kanye never says "fuck Kanye", but that's mainly because of the ball gag when he's getting pegged

Re: Kanye

[oldmac31310]

fuff fanwe!

and nothing of any value

[Anonymous Coward]

would be bought.

Re:and nothing of any value

[dysmal]

Pretty sure Windows Phone has a larger user base than Tidal.

Re: and nothing of any value

[slazzy]

I'll tip my zune to that!

Re: and nothing of any value

[oldmac31310]

Squirt me!

Crap like this

[rsilvergun]

is why I'd like to see a return to the old tax rates from the 50s,60s and 70s before "Reganomics" took hold. When you've got as much cash as Apple why _not_ just buy every single possible competitor... I mean, wasn't Tidal another one of those services started _because_ of the crappy deals Apple gave artists?

Re:Crap like this

[Anonymous Coward]

No, we are talking about tax rates, stay on topic.

Re:Crap like this

[PopeRatzo]

So you'd like to go back to 20+% interest rates, rationing gas, and horrible unemployment?

The country did pretty well when the top income tax rate was 90%.

Re:Crap like this

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. See here. It presents the bare facts of marginal rates adjusted to 2013 dollar values for direct comparisons. Notice the swift decline in the highest marginal tax leading up to the the stock market crash in 1929, and only in 1932 returned from the disastrous 25% to the 40-50%+ normal before the crash era, roughly when the US economy was brought to recovery with the New Deal. Since then fluctuations have held up roughly the same pattern - wealth interest lowering the highest marginal rate only for financial collapse to restore it to a sustainable and significantly higher rate.
This data damns the fantasies of the wealthy that they are the best users of funds gained at such disproportionate rates compared to the population.

Re: Crap like this

[Anonymous Coward]

Please_stop_using_underscores. This_isnt_Java_enums.

Re:Crap like this

[thegarbz]

I mean, wasn't Tidal another one of those services started _because_ of the crappy deals Apple gave artists?

I thought it was a service started because a self-obsessed douche-bag was overly self-obsessed, thought he was the worlds greatest producer, and worlds greatest businessman, and then couldn't figure out why people pirated his stuff when he released his self-obsessed album on an obscure platform no one uses.

It would be a real bad outcome for Apple to buy this. Not for Apple, but because self-important shits who have an epic failure of an idea don't deserve the windfall success of another company buying out a competitor for ... reasons.

I mean it's not like Tidal is a threat to Apple's model. People's subscription lasted precisely as long as it took to get a copy of Kanye's latest verbal diarrhea in digital form, and then abandoned it.

Re:Crap like this

[ttucker]

I thought it was a service started because a self-obsessed douche-bag was overly self-obsessed,

Jay-Z actually bought the service from Norwegians/Swedes who wanted lossless music streaming.

Re:Crap like this

[fred911]

"self-obsessed douche-bag"

Well put, I couldn't agree more. It's also one reason I refuse to even listen or read anything bearing his name or any of the associated "reality" "talent" the douche-bag is associated with.

Re:Crap like this

[teg]

is why I'd like to see a return to the old tax rates from the 50s,60s and 70s before "Reganomics" took hold. When you've got as much cash as Apple why _not_ just buy every single possible competitor... I mean, wasn't Tidal another one of those services started _because_ of the crappy deals Apple gave artists?

• The tax rates were applied to people, not companies. It wouldn't change anything here.
• Tidal started as WiMP in 2010, 5 years before Apple Music was launched. Initially, their selling point was curated content tailor to the local markets they were operating in, and they also helped digitize many old recordings here in Norway. Later, they started offering lossless streaming.

.

Re:Crap like this

[khallow]

Correlation doesn't imply causation. Here, we don't have a mechanism by which the rich paying less taxes results in stock market bubbles (ignoring here that we don't really have a reason to care about stock market bubbles in the first place). It's just some AC wanting to find any rationalization no matter how tenuous for sticking it to the rich, which is not something I care about.

I doubt we have a correlation either. For example, the New Deal tax increases correlate with the second US recession of the Great Depression. And that was the first of six recessions which happened during the highest (91%) taxation of the highest bracket. So no correlation there.

Nor does the 1969-1970 recession correlation with the tax reductions of the mid-60s. The 1973-75 and 1980 recession didn't happen during any decline in tax rate. And the tax declines of the 80s, which are by far the greatest tax declines of the entire period, saw considerable economic growth both before and after the 1990 recession with nothing comparable before until you get before the drag of the Vietnam War and oil shocks.

This data damns the fantasies of the wealthy that they are the best users of funds gained at such disproportionate rates compared to the population.

So no correlation. But then again, you have to be pretty dumb to think that excessively taxing the employers of the US (who tend to fall to a degree in that highest tax bracket) results in economic growth.

Re: Crap like this

[Anonymous Coward]

You come across as a bit of a newbie. Enums are the only thing you'd use an underscore with in Java (which are something like C constants). C, of course, is riddled with underscores (if you follow accepted practices in naming) as is Python and a whole host of other languages, all of which would be a better example of underscore use than Java.

Re:Crap like this

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a statistician by trade, and my hobby is economic history. and in applications it is entirely possible to determine causality. Think quality control. There is a gradual trend upward from the origin of income taxes until 1913. Historically that is the last tax before world war I and the US accumulation of significant debt that Andrew Mellon had to deal with afterwards. You can look at the data directly because there is no need for modeling, there are clear trends in each direction, with the downward ones not only rarer but match exactly the worst points in US economic history.

Re:Crap like this

[khallow]

is why I'd like to see a return to the old tax rates from the 50s,60s and 70s before "Reganomics" took hold.

This is a classic case of cargo cult economics. There are several deep problems with this outlook. First, the prosperity of the past had nothing to do with the tax rate. Second, the problems of today have nothing to do with the tax rate. Third, most of the rich never had to pay that tax rate. And fourth, this is a brazen case of envy which completely disregards the harm it would cause and should have no place in economic policies that affect hundreds of millions of people.

So let's start with the first point. The prosperity of the US was generated by a combination of several factors, such as a mostly free society of well over a hundred million people and economy, being the only major power after the Second World War which didn't have to rebuild its economy, and massive industrial and commercial base. Why are we to assume that the tax rate on the highest tax bracket is more relevant than having a huge economic base, for example?

When someone proposes a one-size-fits-all policy like this as a cure-all, they implicitly are assuming that the policy is more important than any other economic factor. I note elsewhere that a replier which claimed a correlation between cutting that tax rate and "stock market bubbles" fails hard in assuming that there was an actual correlation between the tax rate and recessions (which relatively speaking are more serious problems than stock market bubbles),

Second, there is this assumption that the current problems of the US are due to the much lower tax rate of the highest tax bracket. This completely ignores globalization and the fact that US workers compete with billions of workers who can often do the same job for a small fraction of the cost. Increasing the tax rate on the highest income bracket isn't going to make those billions of workers disappear and magically duplicate the unique economic conditions of an era that is now firmly in the past. That fantasy of replicating some irrelevant or even harmful aspect to generate prosperity is what makes this cargo cult economics.

Then there's the issue of the wealthy not paying those exorbitant tax rates.You may have heard of "tax loopholes". There were plenty during this era of high tax rates. This resulted in the extremely wealthy not actually having a huge difference in the effective tax they paid from the past to the present. For example, this letter cites a change for the 0.01% most wealthy from almost 43% in 1979 (when the highest income tax bracket was 70%) to 32% in 2005 (when it was 35%).

Finally, there's the matter of this being a brazen case of envy with no business intruding on a matter that affects hundreds of millions of people. It's a stick-it-to-the-rich fantasy which ignores that the "solution" sticks it to employers. Which in turn is economically suicidal in light of the fact that the biggest problem facing the US is labor competition with the developing world. Nor do we see any sort of well developed rationale for why higher taxes would do anything productive. It's merely assumed to work.

My view is that employers are far more valuable presently in the US economy than skilled workers without a job. Punitive income taxes and the like discourage employment of people by taking away much of the incentive to grow a business to employ more people and by taking away funds that would be used to employ people and squandering it on typically grotesquely inefficient or harmful government program. It's time to try something that works.

Re:Crap like this

[SvnLyrBrto]

So very much this. It is beyond and past time for the entire Kanye / Kardashian / Beyonce / J-Z / Jenner pantheon to just go the hell away and fade away into obscurity.

It's not even as though I seek out their vainglorious tommyrot. In fact I actively avoid it. But it keeps intruding into the spheres that I do care about. I know bad news sells more papers than good. And people mostly goto hockey games to see the fights and NASCAR to see the crashes. But hell... I feel like a dumber and all-around worse person for even knowing who those people are. And damn the media for keeping them in business. It's not as though they produce anything worthwhile besides media attention anyway. At this point, they're even worse than Tila Tequila or the Jersey Shore crowd.

Re:Crap like this

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet you have no data, and even more spurious (illegitimate, and indemonstrable) claims - all while being entirely self serving. Hmm.

Re:Crap like this

[khallow]

And yet you have no data,

Why is my lack of "data" relevant? I notice the posters jumping on the tax-the-rich bandwagon just made up a lot of shit. Meanwhile we have these facts. First, I presented data indicating that the wealthiest 0.01% haven't seen a significant change in their tax burden over the past 37 years.

Second, I presented the fact that the US is experiencing labor competition from the developing world. Rudimentary economics indicates this would explain most phenomena alleged to be the result of an overly low rate on the highest tax bracket (such as US capital growing in valuation at a higher rate than US labor).

We also have a strong implication of envy present here such as you posting at the emotional level of a two year old. I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't your first fact-free turd in this thread.

Re:Crap like this

[Anonymous Coward]

Data is the only objective decision support. I make around 150K per year as a PhD statistician workin in industrial quality control, and I also have significant savings in retirement accounts as well as investments in the stock market. I am in favor of higher income taxes and higher capital gains taxes to improve the financial stability of the US economy over the recent brinkmanship and posturing adopted by the House of Representatives.

Re:Crap like this

[khallow]

Data is the only objective decision support. I make around 150K per year as a PhD statistician workin in industrial quality control, and I also have significant savings in retirement accounts as well as investments in the stock market.

And I'm a time traveling Caribbean pirate from the year 2304, arrrrrr. Emphasizing an imaginary "data" over objective reasoning indicates to me that if you really are credentialed as you say, you didn't learn so much from those credentials.

. I am in favor of higher income taxes and higher capital gains taxes to improve the financial stability of the US economy over the recent brinkmanship and posturing adopted by the House of Representatives.

Why would that improve the financial stability of the US economy? We ignore also the obvious problem that financial stability is not all that advantageous. For example, short term thinking, such as the phenomenon of businesses not looking past the next quarter, is due to financial stability. And we still have recessions and such, they just tend to get bigger before they overcome the financial stability mechanisms.

Re:Crap like this

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry you're so ignorant - based on your last two posts I have no interest in having any discussion with you. Go do something with your life.

Re:Crap like this

[khallow]

"Have no data" is a pseudo-science accusation (particularly given that I did have data, contrary to the assertion). I'm not going to waste my time on bullshit accusations especially when the people making them gave a blank check to the people I replied to earlier who just pulled assertions out of their asses.

#notanaccident

[Anonymous Coward]

#richniggaonniggacrime #scroogemcbucks #donthatetheplayershatethegame

Let me get this straight

[BuypolarBear]

Let me get this straight: they like that it's owned by artists, so they're going to buy it from those artists? Amazing how they can't see the problem with this.

Re: Let me get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

You posted for me. Sociopaths never quite get that we just want to be rid of them.

Re:Let me get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

It's bitztream, the autism-hating Slashdot troll!

Re:Let me get this straight

[oldmac31310]

There is not much to like about autism, is there?

To be fair it was never 90%

[rsilvergun]

it was a 90% _marginal_ rate. 90% taxes on income after $2 million, IIRC (and that was in 1960s money, something like $17 million in today's money). The 1% paid the same taxes as a coal miner up to that coal miner's salary.

Re:To be fair it was never 90%

[PopeRatzo]

it was a 90% _marginal_ rate. 90% taxes on income after $2 million, IIRC (and that was in 1960s money, something like $17 million in today's money). The 1% paid the same taxes as a coal miner up to that coal miner's salary.

OK, I agree with you. We need to have a 90% marginal rate on income over $17million. We can agree that's a good starting point.

Re:To be fair it was never 90%

[adolf]

I'm game, too: $17,000,000.00/yr seems like a good starting point to me as well, since that's certainly plenty for most of the most-exuberant lifestyles imaginable.

But won't we need a lot of torches to make this? And what about pitchforks?

Re:To be fair it was never 90%

[Anonymous Coward]

I smell a business opportunity, and I'll get all those profits before we jack up the tax rate.

Re:To be fair it was never 90%

[geekmux]

it was a 90% _marginal_ rate. 90% taxes on income after $2 million, IIRC (and that was in 1960s money, something like $17 million in today's money). The 1% paid the same taxes as a coal miner up to that coal miner's salary.

OK, I agree with you. We need to have a 90% marginal rate on income over $17million. We can agree that's a good starting point.

Talk of taxation on the rich is stupid and utterly pointless until you shut DOWN the loopholes surrounding offshore tax havens.

If you're looking for a starting point, start with the obvious problem we have TODAY.

Re:To be fair it was never 90%

[tnk1]

Ridiculous. How will I be able to afford my own aircraft carrier if you're taking 90% of my billions?

I have the right to keep and bear armed naval fighters.

Zero

[dysmal]

That is the amount of fucks given about the prospect of Apple gobbling up the most hyped music streaming service that no individual actually knows a subscriber of.

Re:Zero

[thegarbz]

I give a fuck. Self-obsessed douche-bags powered exclusively by marketing hype shouldn't get rich by creating a huge failure.

Re:Zero

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that how Kayne got rich?

Re:Zero

[teg]

That is the amount of fucks given about the prospect of Apple gobbling up the most hyped music streaming service that no individual actually knows a subscriber of.

I subscribe to it, and have done so for many years - I started way before Jay Z bought it. Back in the day, it had nice curated playlists - which spotify did not have. It also added lossless streaming, which I wanted.

These days, the playlists in Apple Music are far more numerous and fits me better - the increased focus on music I don't like in Tidal (hip hop) makes a exit more likely. If only Apple Music had lossless....

Re: Zero

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly why I have Tidal and dropped Spotify and Apple. The lack of lossless. If either of the other streaming services bring lossless, I'll get those ASAP

Re: Zero

[avatar avatar]

It worries me that they're simultaneously gobbling up platforms (beats, tidal), while pushing hardware manufacturers to abandon open standards and migrate to their proprietary drm garbage. No other company has such weight to forcibly drag consumers into a vertically integrated, walled garden. I fully expect that Tidal (and any others they gobble up) users will soon require Lightning headphones for the "full experience", or for drm "security" reasons, or whatever.

Re:Zero

[oldmac31310]

You have golden ears, bless you.

Exclusive streaming rights?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Didn't those "exclusives" last all of a week or two before they also became available on Apple Music?

(It's a serious question. I'm a Pandora One user; plus I don't really care whether or not I ever hear either album)

A relevant quote

[BuypolarBear]

"There's a sucker born every minute." -P. T. Barnum

Oh crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Now they'll be bungling that crap with beats headphones and other crap Tim Cook buys because his people are so totally out of ideas.

He should step down, join Meg Whitman and the others like him.

Re:Oh crap

[oldmac31310]

You're probably very right.

I require higher quality sound than Apple's 250

[Cafe Alpha]

aac, and apple music won't even run on my phone.

I've lost Mog and Beats Music - if I lose Tidal Music I'm going to start pirating.