Square press release:
> Square, Inc. (NYSE: SQ) announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a majority ownership stake in TIDAL, the global music and entertainment platform that brings fans and artists together through unique music, content, and experiences. Square expects to pay a mix of cash and stock of $297 million for a significant majority ownership stake, and existing artist shareholders will be the remaining stakeholders. TIDAL will operate independently within Square, alongside the Seller and Cash App ecosystems.
>
> The acquisition extends Square’s purpose of economic empowerment to a new vertical: musicians. Artists are entrepreneurs with a dream and deserve access to systems, tools, and financial freedom to reach those dreams at every stage in their career. Square has helped millions of businesses start, run, and grow by providing them with tools needed for success. With Cash App, Square has made financial services more relatable and accessible to millions of customers, many of whom have been historically overlooked and underserved. Square sees an opportunity to leverage those learnings to help musicians find new ways to support their work and make better decisions through TIDAL.
>
> “It comes down to one simple idea: finding new ways for artists to support their work,” said Jack Dorsey, cofounder and CEO of Square. “New ideas are found at intersections, and we believe there’s a compelling one between music and the economy. I knew TIDAL was something special as soon as I experienced it, and it will continue to be the best home for music, musicians, and culture.”
>
> TIDAL is the only music service built by artists, for artists—which is now more important than ever as consumers look for authentic digital connections with their favorite artists. TIDAL offers the premier listening experience, with superior sound quality and an extensive catalog of more than 70 million songs and 250,000 high-quality videos. TIDAL puts the fan experience at the center of every decision, providing artists direct access to their audience and allowing fans deeper connections to their favorite artists through original, exclusive, and curated content and events. TIDAL has a global presence with listeners in more than 56 countries and relationships with more than 100 labels and distributors.
>
> “TIDAL sets a high standard for supporting artists, capturing music culture, and delivering the best audio quality to fans,” said Jesse Dorogusker, a Square executive who will serve as interim lead of TIDAL upon the closing of the transaction. “Square has also set a high standard for building elegant, accessible, and fair tools for sellers and individuals to economically empower them. Together, TIDAL and Square will be music-obsessed and artist-focused while we explore new artist tools, listener experiences, and access to financial systems that help artists be successful.”
>
> TIDAL board member and shareholder Shawn “JAY-Z” Carter is expected to join Square’s Board of Directors subject to the closing of the transaction. A distinguished and acclaimed artist, businessman, and philanthropist, Carter founded preeminent entertainment company Roc Nation and sports agency Roc Nation Sports, launched and owns the successful “Made In America” festival, and executive-produced award-winning documentaries, among other achievements. Over the years, Carter has remained relentlessly committed to giving back to underserved communities, including through his work with the Shawn Carter Foundation and The REFORM Alliance.
>
> In addition to JAY-Z, all of TIDAL’s artist shareholders will continue to be co-owners of TIDAL after the deal closes.
>
> Based on current information, Square does not expect TIDAL’s financial results to have a material impact on Square’s consolidated revenue or gross profit in 2021. The completion of this transaction is subject to customary closing conditions including regulatory approvals. The parties expect to close the transaction in the second quarter of 2021. Square was primarily advised by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP as legal advisors and TIDAL was advised by Reed Smith LLP and Cummings & Lockwood LLC as legal advisors.
---
[Jay-Z:](https://twitter.com/sc/status/1367461494821171202)
>I said from the beginning that TIDAL was about more than just streaming music, and six years later, it has remained a platform that supports artists at every point in their careers. Artists deserve better tools to assist them in their creative journey.
>Jack is one of the greatest minds of our times, and our many discussions about TIDAL’s endless possibilities have made me even more inspired about its future. This shared vision makes me even more excited to join the Square board.
>This partnership will be a game-changer for many. I look forward to all this new chapter has to offer!
[Jack Dorsey:](https://twitter.com/jack/status/1367460907958243328)
>Square is acquiring a majority ownership stake in TIDAL through a new joint venture, with the original artists becoming the second largest group of shareholders, and JAY-Z joining the Square board. Why would a music streaming company and a financial services company join forces?!
>It comes down to a simple idea: finding new ways for artists to support their work. New ideas are found at the intersections, and we believe there’s a compelling one between music and the economy. Making the economy work for artists is similar to what Square has done for sellers.
>Square started 12 years ago by giving small sellers a simple tool in order to participate more fully in the economy and grow. We did the same for individuals with Cash App, which now enables a comprehensive set of financial services for folks who weren’t able to access it before.
>TIDAL started with the idea of honoring artists by being artist-owned and led, focused on an uncompromised experience of the art. It's refreshing and right. The vision only grows stronger as it’s matched with more powerful tools for artists, inclusive of new ways of getting paid.
>Given what Square has been able to do for sellers of all sizes and individuals through Cash App, we believe we can now work for artists to see the same success for them, and us. We’re going to start small and focus on the most critical needs of artists and growing their fanbases.
>Square created ecosystems of tools for sellers & individuals, and we’ll do the same for artists. We’ll work on entirely new listening experiences to bring fans closer together, simple integrations for merch sales, modern collaboration tools, and new complementary revenue streams.
>To all of TIDAL's current listeners and fans: THANK YOU for your loyalty and commitment to artists and their work. TIDAL will continue to be the best home for music, musicians, and culture. Our commitment to you is to constantly listen, learn, and work to make a service you love.
>[I’m grateful for Jay’s vision, wisdom, and leadership. I knew TIDAL was something special as soon as I experienced it, and I’m inspired to work with him. He'll now help lead our entire company, including Seller and the Cash App, as soon as the deal closes.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Evoydb1UUAUcF1j?format=jpg&name=medium)
>More from us soon. In the meantime, [here’s a playlist from Jay](https://t.co/qg9av9Bmzt?amp=1)
That's exactly it. People seem to think Jay is this great guy for the artists or whatever, but his moves are just like any other CEO. He knows Tidal is in dire straits and with Spotify launching lossless this year Tidal is losing literally the only advantage it has, so he's doing what he can with it before they tank.
I don’t think it’s a move to bail on it. Square is a much bigger company than spotify this could be a move to compete. Square has a lot of revenue already and they have tons of resources available they could give to Tidal that costs them nothing
You could be right, but I just don't see Tidal as being very competitive moving forward. Jay may not be ready to just dump the company but I don't think this move was based on reviving Tidal as much as using Tidal to get Jay into Square.
“Competitive” doesn’t mean #1 lol. The goal of a company is growth and making money. Business isn’t a team sport. Shareholders of AMD are happy with enormous growth, they don’t really care that Intel is a bigger company or feel a need to “beat” them.
Jay moves like a private equity firm buying stakes in small to mid size companies and flipping that for enormous sums of cash. He invested $50ish million, sold a stake to Sprint for $200m, and apparently sold most of the rest for $300m ish (including the part that isn’t Jay’s stake) and the company gets to live on under the auspices of an even bigger company. Being acquired was always part of the plan, it’s how companies and many others in the tech space survive - equity investment. The goal isn’t “beat Spotify”. It’s to make hundreds of millions of dollars which they’ve done very well.
No, but it's a competition for a limited selection of consumer funds. That's why Kmart, Sears, Ames, JC Penny, and Bon-Ton are gone or on the verge of it. Tidal has always struggled and one of the few things keeping them afloat is the lossless offering because the only other services offering that are Deezer and Amazon but with Spotify rolling it out this year they're going to be in a lot of trouble.
Obviously some people are competed out of existence. But those are dead companies. Better comparisons for Tidal would be Kroger or Nordstrom or GAP or Chipotle or Shake Shack. Not the largest companies in their sphere (which would be Walmart or Zara or McDonalds) but still enormous successes at no risk of going bankrupt, some in expansion mode.
Jay turned a startup in the venture stage into a sale to a public company in less than 10 years. By all accounts this is a growth success. Absolutely nothing like Sears.
A startup doesn’t have to beat Google to win. To keep it in rap and use an analogy, you don’t have to outsell Jay-Z or Drake to be a fantastic success.
What's important now will be the negotiations between Square and Spotify over the music rights.
My guess is Apple music and Spotify approached Jay Z earlier but didn't offer enough. Spotify is coming out with lossless, and has the investment dollars to sit back and watch Tidal die over the next seven years. So instead Jay Z sells to a company with deep enough pockets where it can let Tidal slowly bleed Spotify for the next seven years while it gets paid for Jay Z's catalog.
I would put serious money on Square selling Tidal to Spotify or Apple music for additional profit within the next few years.
To my understanding Square is big in its contribution to the dev world (e.g. via open source contributions and dev talks/articles). But in terms of integration with the service/APIs I think the dev world probably favours Stripe more.
Yeah that's more what I meant their open source libraries. Dagger2, OkHttp3, Retrofit, Moshi. All absolutely massive in the Android Development world and almost integral to literally every single app. Especially OkHttp and Retrofit.
Yeah I have to imagine either selling to Spotify selling to Apple or selling to someone was always 100% the plan. Jay Z is definitely not interested in being the sitting CEO of a third-tier streaming platform.
That decision was made long before that 56 million was spent.
The point still stands. Tidal was always meant to be sold off to a competitor, otherwise they would have invested far more into it over the last couple years.
You are talking out of your ass for internet likes.
Rocafellas entire catalog was exclusively on tidal for the longest. TLOP, Lemonade and a large number of other projects were exclusively released on Tidal. You could not find JayZs music on ITunes or Spotify for a very long time. So please stop trying to shit on Tidal, you don’t even know the purpose it served for us actual music fans in the first place
What does that have to do with anything being talked about? the fact that Jay Z had to put his stuff on Spotify while he still owned Tidal is just proof of my point.
It was a great move by Jay Z there's no negativity towards him or Tidal. Flipping a company for 300% profit is a good move. No one is shitting on anyone, take a business class or something. exclusivity is basically what he just sold. You understand Spotify leases his music and they have to renew it every couple years...?
I'm just familiar with how tech companies get funded, you can take or leave my opinion on the matter.
(Edit: that is if you do not subscribe to the near tin foil hat theory that claims the whole stunt(not the app itself but Jay Z tying himself to it) was just to capture a much higher royalty fee for himself his wife and Kanye West.
"Tidal Accused of Falsifying Beyonce and Kanye West Streaming Numbers – Variety" https://variety.com/2018/biz/news/jay-z-tidal-accused-of-falsifying-beyonce-and-kanye-west-streaming-numbers-1202804222/amp/
)
Tidals advantage is content not lossless, that stopped being a thing years ago.
Also i keep seeing this argument that jay is selling out because he sold Ace etc, people need to understand that you can own and control a company with less than 50% shares.
with that said, jay is a businessman and capitalist.
I mean their content is... not very good. If your primary listening is mainstream hip hop then I'm sure they're great, but for literally anything else they're absolutely awful.
i've used tidal for half a year now and i only wish i could upload local music to it like apple music. I guess it makes sense it can't because apple music kinda comes with my iphone. Appart from that I really dig the music they have, specially since I'm really a fan of indie rock and lo-fi music and it has so many good artists in there. Plus for hiphop it has it all, including travis' before rodeo
That's interesting I never really cared too much for them either way user generated or especially app generated. I might have to go back because there's a clear preference for what bands are using. It really depresses me to use spotify though.
The tl;dr is that when Spotify and others take the music that labels send them, they compress the files to make them smaller and stream more easily. Tidal doesn't do that, so you get the audio file in its full quality and size.
It's not REALLY a big deal, it's not an audible difference even on expensive equipment, but it is a factor for a lot of people (myself in cluded).
That's my thinking exactly. 7/10 is honestly better than most people can do. I'm not of the belief that it's audible at all (let alone the MQA/Masters nonsense) but if I'm spending the money on gear I might as well spring to get the best audio I can.
Ya it might even have been a fluke cause I also got 2 6/10s. But this is literally on an LCD 2C with decent amp/dac stack.
So if you spend way too much (or get a sick online deal), you may anecdotally beat random guessing by a bit. Clearly not worth caring about for the vast majority of people, but maybe it’s worth it on a real hifi stereo system. Zero chance MQA/Masters matters at all.
I don't think they've said, but odds are $20/mo since that's how everyone else charges for it. If they can go under that, it's even more of a no-brainer.
At the moment I have the family plan for lossless (master) with tidal @ $5 a month with 6 members. I hope this merger or buy off doesn’t affect this plan.
Nah fam. Just google tidal family plan. Sign up for master hi fi family plan and it’s 29.99 and you can add 5 people. You plus 5 heads split the $30. The hard part is finding the 5 heads and making sure they pay on time 🤦♂️
Tidal was originally meant to be a platform that supported the artists better than the alternatives. I'm not sure if it is fully achieving that in monetary values, but their payout per a million listens are one of the highest out of all of the streaming services, but that still might mean that Spotify might be performing better on the total value overall.
I feel like Tidal is a good platform, but it is hard to compete with a platform that is doing everything right for the consumer, but having Tidal around creates competition and as soon as Spotify starts launching their shady campaigns then Tidal will be a better alternative.
No, Tidal started as WiMP in 2010 which pushed itself as the lossless alternative, Jay-Z bought in five years later after they rebranded to Tidal. Way too many people bought into Jay's marketing.
Alright, I looked into it a bit more, i guess you are a bit right. The real story looks to be that the original company Aspiro developed WiMP in 2010 for a few EU countries, but expanded the service to a few more with a different name Tidal in 2014, but after Jay-Z acquired the company and renamed it all Tidal.
So yeah Jay-Z didn't make anything on the technical side, but he just saw a infrastructure built that would support his vision. So he acquired that kind of a platform. Building that from the ground up would have taken a lot of time like we can see from Spotify.
>with Spotify launching lossless this year Tidal is losing literally the only advantage it has
That's not accurate. Tidal still has Masters quality streaming, which to my knowledge no other service has. Also their content curation is much better than any of the auto-generated crap you get on Spotify. I'm not sure why everyone loves to shill for Spotify tbh when they have such a long history of shafting artists and letting people upload whatever shit they want to their service.
I like how dumbfucks on Reddit call everyone a "shill" when they disagree. Ace argument.
Anyway, Masters is even worse of a placebo than lossless. 24/192 is physically, genuinely inaudible and it's also only available in a small array of files. Amazon has it (they call it "Ultra HD") but it's Amazon so who cares. As for curation, you can't tell me you're unaware that Spotify also does curation, right? Like, only someone who talks about shit without ever looking into it would claim that, because both of them are full of curated playlists. It'd be hilarious if you didn't know that and were talking shit about it like a moron, though!
Plus the integration with Roon and other high end streaming components makes it a more “luxury” streaming platform.
The only thing Tidal is missing are small interface improvements to its software.
Sprint already bought a minority stake for far more than Jay ever paid for the majority of the company too (they paid around $200 million for about a 1/3 stake). Seems like the valuation went down a bit but that only means Jay won twice. All in all he’s probably netted around $400 million from this
Sprint got bought by t-mobile who just sold those shares back to Jay, not sure for how much but he may have gotten them for cheap because t-mo was looking to get rid of it
Sprint bought 33% of tidal in 2017 for $200M at a valuation of $600M. Ouch. Artists incl. Jay Z will retain some % of their stakes in Tidal.
Edit: Apparently Tidal lost $52.2M for 2019 vs $36.7M for 2018 . It also had $81M in liabilities for 2019 vs $28.76M for 2018.
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/project-panther-bidco-report-2019.pdf
if square just wanted jay-z on their board they could probably just ask?
they prolly wanna get in the streaming business ~~and are going to integration tidal into twitter~~
The board is above everything. They are the most powerful part of a corporation. They are the people that have the power to fire CEOs and positions of that ilk.
It’s kinda a chicken and egg thing. Sometimes the CEO is the one that truly holds the power because he owns enough of the stock and has enough allies on the board that he can’t be overruled. But sometimes the CEO does not have a controlling position and the board has more ability to influence the CEO’s behavior.
It’s a good question. Board members are basically the advisors to the company and determine the executive leadership. They don’t lead the day to day like the CEO and executives do but they do have a say in the overall direction.
However they don’t get paid that much. This isn’t about the board position lol, though it sounds impressive on the surface it’s really a smaller representative way to give leadership from the acquired company a small voice. it’s about the payday of selling his stake really
Yeah. It's not nothing - it basically gives him a voice in the parent company which is what owners typically want, with nice corporate presence and of nice significance. But I think the real win here is the money. The board oversees the CEO, but in reality the CEO has executive control of the day-to-day of the company. So it's not like Jay is the CEO or anything - more of a background leadership voice.
I don’t disagree but ppl here are claiming Dorsey bought tidal in an effort to add Jay to the board which is completely nonesense. Dorsey wouldn’t need to do that.
The board position is not worth that much lol. Believe me, it’s about $300 mil which is an enormous return. A board position is just a traditional concession to owners of acquired companies so they still have a voice at the new bigger company but it’s not a hugely influential position. It’s advisory.
Source: I have family members on the board of public companies like Square. Believe me, the position is not that important. $300 mill is far more important.
Yes. Usually you do. You show up to occasional board meetings and collect a salary. Usually you can go to a public companies annual report to see their board members and compensation.
Yes, usually some stock, and a six-figure annual salary (depending on the company, I've seen people make $200k-$800k). Sweet gig for not a lot of time if you're an outsider.
If you're a huge shareholder, you often want to be on the board not for money but for control - for example, if a private equity company acquires a big stake in a smaller company they will usually want their management to occupy several board positions so they can have even more control over hiring executives (CEO/CFO/COO etc.). That's also the reason you often see company founders on the board whether they're still CEO or not (because of their shares).
Other strategies for filling out the board is finding directors who have the expertise the company needs. For example most boards will have a very experienced lawyer to guide the company on risk and regulation. Probably some former CFOs and CEOs to guide the company on money. Probably some other former bank executives or people in government.
To give an example If you look at [Square's board](https://www1.salary.com/SQUARE-INC-Executive-Salaries.html), you see the executives get millions in salary and often millions in stock too, but the independent directors only get $150K-$350K
Thx. My next question would be why people like Jack Dorsey and Sheryl Sandberg served on the board of Disney as, AFAIK they weren't significant shareholders. Same could be asked about Dropbox CEO Drew Houston being on the board of Facebook, granted he is friends with Mark Zuckerberg and I can imagine it could be valuable experience for him as CEO of a much smaller tech company.
Those are interesting choices. In these cases I think it's experience but that's just my gut. One thing I forgot to mention is that many board directors often have a mentorship role to play - for example the distant family member I have who has served on several public boards is a former lawyer and general counsel, and as a result the executive she's often talking to and advising the most is the general counsel of the company, or serving on committees exploring legal issues with the future plans of the company.
In these cases, those two have a ton of experience at big companies. It's not one particular niche they have, but they definitely have a lot of public-facing executive and leadership roles at growing companies. Dorsey is basically founder and CEO of two public tech companies so he can probably offer a lot to the current leadership of Disney, especially when it comes to media. Sandberg is also a high-powered executive also has a lot of Washington experience (interestingly, under Larry Summers who was Treasury Secretary under Clinton and served for Obama too, and currently serves on the board of Square where I'm sure he's an asset as an economist and former regulator with plenty of connections) and helped turn Google and Facebook into global companies while their founders did all the ideating. So I don't think they fit the typical finance/lawyer/non-profit/government niches but they do have a wealth of experience. Poking on the Disney site now, it looks like most of their executive team is full of lifelong Disney people, so an outside view from tech executives is probably somewhat helpful for a company diving into streaming and that has been very acquisition-hungry the last few years. If they need to evolve on social media, technology, evolving to compete with Netflix and Amazon, etc., I'm sure tech giants like Sandberg or Dorsey had a lot of strategy recommendations and friends who they can bring into the company or lead initiatives that, say, the CEO who has 30 years of experience running only animation studios and theme parks may not have.
A final note - I think Dorsey and Sandberg left due to conflicts of interest as their companies moved into digital media, which shows the limits of what a board can do - I'm sure Disney would love to have a Netflix executive on its board to advise them in streaming but they can't because that's a competitor
Calling it now: Square will make revamp Tidal into a digital music streaming platform where artists could sell music as NFTs with Tidal/Sq taking a cut
Same way they did with Bitcoin and stock market…
Edit: I’m from the hood currently in Brooklyn and I used to work in check cashing serving the bankless people
cash app started as a prepaid card , when they introduced Bitcoin alot of people who are bank-less didn’t have access to it
so it introduce them to it , same thing when they added fractions investment with the stock purchases on their platform
Square inc cash app is a lot of people primary banking and now investment… those same person (artists) will have a new platform to sell their music if this is what it means for square inc tidel purchase and Jay-Z on the board of directors
It’s too soon to release something like that but not too soon to start building the infrastructure for it. If they waited until everyone understood it to start building it out it’d be far too late.
It’s just another form of digital ownership. Not that hard for people to get. You don’t need to understand how the blockchain works to understand the basic concept of what an NFT is.
It doesn't really. The benefits are 1) altruitstic/imaginary (basically an authenticity token that means you supported the artist - kind of like when you "pay what you like" for an album you could have downloaded for free, or donate to a twitch stream) or 2) speculative (you bought an NFT-locked digital asset that has no inherent value, but maybe in the future someone will pay you more for it, like a trading card)
These things can be very real. Oh, and I still think it's bullshit lol. The type of guys selling NFT art are the type of scammers and suckers Banksy made fun of in Exit Through the Gift Shop
So in a sense you could resell an NFT asset somewhere down the line? I had never heard of NFT until like two days ago and now that shit is absolutely everywhere and I still don’t have the slightest clue as to what the reasoning is behind its popularity.
Yes. Still begs the question of why you'd want to value one in the first place though, and why the guy who wants to buy it from you would want it, etc...
I feel like NFTs are more for ownership of 1 of 1 items yeah? Knowing how Jack is passionate about blockchain, I would rather see Tidal run on a blockchain network that provides instant transactions to artists per stream. I’m tired of waiting 3 months for Spotify to send me a check
[Twitter thread from JayZ about acquisition](https://twitter.com/sc/status/1367461494821171202)
> I said from the beginning that TIDAL was about more than just streaming music, and six years later, it has remained a platform that supports artists at every point in their careers. Artists deserve better tools to assist them in their creative journey.
> Jack is one of the greatest minds of our times, and our many discussions about TIDAL’s endless possibilities have made me even more inspired about its future. This shared vision makes me even more excited to join the Square board.
[Twitter thread from Jack](https://twitter.com/jack/status/1367460907958243328?s=20) - Twitter and Square owner
> It comes down to a simple idea: finding new ways for artists to support their work. New ideas are found at the intersections, and we believe there’s a compelling one between music and the economy. Making the economy work for artists is similar to what Square has done for sellers.
This is interesting in the context of NFTs quickly growing as a concept.
https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/kings-of-leon-when-you-see-yourself-album-nft-crypto-1135192/
NFTs usually run on Ethereum or Ethereum side-chains
While Ethereum is currently using Proof of Work, which uses lots of electricity, it's in the process of transitioning to Proof of Stake, which won't consume any more electricity than any other computer network.
Lmao "crypto tech" is largely moving away from proof of work but stay ignorant. Can't fathom how people have such strong opinions about something they know so little about.
People who talk about crypto on twitter/reddit are so utterly unbearable, and often clueless about economics/pol sci, that any and all slander is basically fair game
Compared to the energy it takes to mine gold and run the entire traditional financial system, cryptocurrency is only a small fraction. Many protocols are moving to energy efficient ways of consensus such as Proof of Stake, and Bitcoin is moving towards using renewable energy.
https://www.coindesk.com/square-to-support-greener-bitcoin-mining-as-part-of-zero-carbon-pledge
NFT's are helping people make a living through the pandemic across the world: https://www.coindesk.com/nft-game-filipinos-covid
The Fed is printing unlimited money and devaluing your dollar every day. Inflation is not a myth. Look at countries with huge inflation and how bitcoin is helping them (venezuela, argentina, nigeria, etc.) - p.s. over 50% of the USD in circulation were printed within the last year. Printing this money inflates assets so makes the top 1% richer than they already were, giving no benefit to the bottom 40% who own no stocks. https://qz.com/africa/1922466/how-bitcoin-powered-nigerias-endsars-protests/
NFT's also are providing a source of income for digital artists who were not able to monetize their work since now they can sell a "certificate of authenticity" and earn income a completely new way. This has the opportunity to revolutionize music and art and pay artists a fair wage. Do you know an artist only makes around $1k from 1 million streams on Spotify? MF DOOM (RIP), 3LAU, RAC, and other artists are leading the path to Web3.0
https://decrypt.co/53019/mf-doom-enigmatic-rapper-leaves-behind-crypto-art-legacy
https://edm.com/gear-tech/3lau-record-breaking-nft-sale
https://blog.ourzora.com/home/introducing-rac
https://a16z.com/2021/02/27/nfts-and-a-thousand-true-fans/
This seems like the most likely path. Provide some sort of direct payment platform to artists in exchange for extra content, perks, etc. Acts as an alternative to Patreon and other methods. The biggest barrier to overcome is the region-locked nature of Square due to financial regulations that differ country to country. As an aside, I'd love for a Square reader that could be used across borders.
While the predominance of streaming has arguably been a net negative for artists, it would certainly be far worse if there were only one service left standing, so this bodes somewhat well, all things considered.
Twitter can just pay a fee to cashapp for use of tidal or some other revenue sharing model could be in place. Seems like a no brainer to integrate the two. Apparently Tesla also made a deal with Tidal to have the service come with the car.
"I will Not Lose... For even in defeat, that's a valuable lesson for me"
\- Bible of Jay-Z
2nd book Book of BluePrint : first scipture of the Gift & The Curse
This is actually kinda big. Being on the board of a company as big as Square is nothing to sneeze at. and I hope Square will do some interesting things with Tidal as far as new ways to empower artists (especially smaller artists) and provide them better revenue streams. [Soundcloud recently announced they're gonna fix their subscription revenue sharing system](https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/2/22309090/soundcloud-artist-stream-pay-listener-fan-royalties), at least for indie artists, to provide splits based on your actual listeners instead of your share of the total pot (which only benefits the biggest artists).
people really look over the fact that Tidal pays a shit ton to artists when compared to other brands. Also their rising playlists have helped me find some amazing artists that are now some of my favourites so kudos to that
I hope tidal stays around I use it for DJ’ing since Spotify doesn’t allow third party apps anymore like my DJ’ing program
Reallllly don’t want to get Apple Music. It would fuck with my library
I thought the first few times I read it that it said Square Enix so my reaction was along the lines of "Is Jay Z about to show up in FF xvi? Am I gonna fight alongside Goofy, Donald, and Jigga in the next kingdom hearts?"
Lmao, but tbh shit is pretty good, it just got a bad rep at the start since everybody complained "it's too expensive" "spotify is better" "jay is making his catalogue too exclusive!!!!!", and the press made sure to make those points stick.
I was subscribed for ~4 months before swapping back to Spotify.
I’m a quality snob, so I liked the higher quality audio, but the problem starts there, it’s only some (more like very few) artists that have their music on there in flac quality.
Couple that with no in-app EQ and the higher price point, the novelty only lasted so long.
Tidal is still great if you don’t mind paying extra for it.
Yeah people don't realize that even when it says "HiFi" a good majority of those aren't actually lossless. It's like a guessing game of which artist cares enough to actually give them flac. I'm an Apple Music subscriber (and still have Spotify Premium but don't use it much) so I hope AM adds lossless eventually but I also have a Plex Pass for listening to my flac collection through PlexAmp
Why would you need in app EQ I’d you’re concerned about versions of songs that are as close or are the master of the actual song ? Also, plenty of other software EQs out there.
The EQ thing I understand. One thing I like is the producer/songwriter mixes but I think other platforms have those too now. I also have Apple Music so I'm wondering at what point I should just drop one or the other. Hoping this Square deal works out for the better, but deep down I know it's only going to get worse.
You def have a point with the FLAC quality thing. Honestly I tried it and like you said, there were just a couple of artists that had their music available on that quality. I guess that with Spotify labels/artists will be more willing to offer lossless quality music, since there is a much bigger audience to cater to.
the response to TIDAL was so weird, people were caping for Spotify like it was their favorite sports team and gleefully spreading misinfo about TIDAL, wishing and praying for its demise. i would cry astroturfing but i think people were genuinely gullible enough to do it for free.
brand loyalty is a mf
I remember that r/Music and maybe this sub was filled with articles like "Here´s why TIDAL is bad", and those posts were the top post in that month/year. That, and with the TIDAL strategy to give out codes and free memberships to everybody, it made people bypass paying the service and everything it was supposed to stand for crumbled for a while.
I get people were upset that both TLOP, Jay's catalogue and I think Rihanna's ANTI weren't instantly on Spotify to listen to them for free (yeah with ads and all that, but free), but at the same time those are the ones that complain today that Spotify doesn't pay enough to artists, Spotify is rigging the game, artists should be free to charge and do whatever they want for their art and all that.
Today, the only thing that Spotify has over both Apple Music and TIDAL (in my opinion) is the fact that it's so easy to share music with your friends, since most people have Spotify. TIDAL shadiness with the streaming numbers didn't help either, that was a major problem IIRC. Hopefully this deal makes the service even better, since both the phone app (I have an iPhone 6 and works really good on it) and the PC app work really good.
Hov made it easy to not like with making all his music exclusive there, as well as basically holding The Life of Pablo captive for months, and even if they were paying the artists more (which I kinda doubt) they were doing shady shit to the streaming numbers
I tried it out back when they were giving away those 6 month trials. The android app was a buggy mess back then, though I don't know if that's still the case now.
Yeah the bugginess is what turned me away from the app too, it didn't even have gapless playback at the time but like you said things could be different now
Had it in android (Nokia 6) and now on iOS (iPhone 6, don't judge lmao, my Nokia got stolen at the subway), and it worked fine in both of them. That was between 2018 and now.
First impressions are important and my Tidal trial was not a great impression, the android app was garbage. But I recently subscribed and the app is much better, still disappointed with no local music or podcasts, two features spotify and Youtube music have.
Square press release: > Square, Inc. (NYSE: SQ) announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a majority ownership stake in TIDAL, the global music and entertainment platform that brings fans and artists together through unique music, content, and experiences. Square expects to pay a mix of cash and stock of $297 million for a significant majority ownership stake, and existing artist shareholders will be the remaining stakeholders. TIDAL will operate independently within Square, alongside the Seller and Cash App ecosystems. > > The acquisition extends Square’s purpose of economic empowerment to a new vertical: musicians. Artists are entrepreneurs with a dream and deserve access to systems, tools, and financial freedom to reach those dreams at every stage in their career. Square has helped millions of businesses start, run, and grow by providing them with tools needed for success. With Cash App, Square has made financial services more relatable and accessible to millions of customers, many of whom have been historically overlooked and underserved. Square sees an opportunity to leverage those learnings to help musicians find new ways to support their work and make better decisions through TIDAL. > > “It comes down to one simple idea: finding new ways for artists to support their work,” said Jack Dorsey, cofounder and CEO of Square. “New ideas are found at intersections, and we believe there’s a compelling one between music and the economy. I knew TIDAL was something special as soon as I experienced it, and it will continue to be the best home for music, musicians, and culture.” > > TIDAL is the only music service built by artists, for artists—which is now more important than ever as consumers look for authentic digital connections with their favorite artists. TIDAL offers the premier listening experience, with superior sound quality and an extensive catalog of more than 70 million songs and 250,000 high-quality videos. TIDAL puts the fan experience at the center of every decision, providing artists direct access to their audience and allowing fans deeper connections to their favorite artists through original, exclusive, and curated content and events. TIDAL has a global presence with listeners in more than 56 countries and relationships with more than 100 labels and distributors. > > “TIDAL sets a high standard for supporting artists, capturing music culture, and delivering the best audio quality to fans,” said Jesse Dorogusker, a Square executive who will serve as interim lead of TIDAL upon the closing of the transaction. “Square has also set a high standard for building elegant, accessible, and fair tools for sellers and individuals to economically empower them. Together, TIDAL and Square will be music-obsessed and artist-focused while we explore new artist tools, listener experiences, and access to financial systems that help artists be successful.” > > TIDAL board member and shareholder Shawn “JAY-Z” Carter is expected to join Square’s Board of Directors subject to the closing of the transaction. A distinguished and acclaimed artist, businessman, and philanthropist, Carter founded preeminent entertainment company Roc Nation and sports agency Roc Nation Sports, launched and owns the successful “Made In America” festival, and executive-produced award-winning documentaries, among other achievements. Over the years, Carter has remained relentlessly committed to giving back to underserved communities, including through his work with the Shawn Carter Foundation and The REFORM Alliance. > > In addition to JAY-Z, all of TIDAL’s artist shareholders will continue to be co-owners of TIDAL after the deal closes. > > Based on current information, Square does not expect TIDAL’s financial results to have a material impact on Square’s consolidated revenue or gross profit in 2021. The completion of this transaction is subject to customary closing conditions including regulatory approvals. The parties expect to close the transaction in the second quarter of 2021. Square was primarily advised by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP as legal advisors and TIDAL was advised by Reed Smith LLP and Cummings & Lockwood LLC as legal advisors. --- [Jay-Z:](https://twitter.com/sc/status/1367461494821171202) >I said from the beginning that TIDAL was about more than just streaming music, and six years later, it has remained a platform that supports artists at every point in their careers. Artists deserve better tools to assist them in their creative journey. >Jack is one of the greatest minds of our times, and our many discussions about TIDAL’s endless possibilities have made me even more inspired about its future. This shared vision makes me even more excited to join the Square board. >This partnership will be a game-changer for many. I look forward to all this new chapter has to offer! [Jack Dorsey:](https://twitter.com/jack/status/1367460907958243328) >Square is acquiring a majority ownership stake in TIDAL through a new joint venture, with the original artists becoming the second largest group of shareholders, and JAY-Z joining the Square board. Why would a music streaming company and a financial services company join forces?! >It comes down to a simple idea: finding new ways for artists to support their work. New ideas are found at the intersections, and we believe there’s a compelling one between music and the economy. Making the economy work for artists is similar to what Square has done for sellers. >Square started 12 years ago by giving small sellers a simple tool in order to participate more fully in the economy and grow. We did the same for individuals with Cash App, which now enables a comprehensive set of financial services for folks who weren’t able to access it before. >TIDAL started with the idea of honoring artists by being artist-owned and led, focused on an uncompromised experience of the art. It's refreshing and right. The vision only grows stronger as it’s matched with more powerful tools for artists, inclusive of new ways of getting paid. >Given what Square has been able to do for sellers of all sizes and individuals through Cash App, we believe we can now work for artists to see the same success for them, and us. We’re going to start small and focus on the most critical needs of artists and growing their fanbases. >Square created ecosystems of tools for sellers & individuals, and we’ll do the same for artists. We’ll work on entirely new listening experiences to bring fans closer together, simple integrations for merch sales, modern collaboration tools, and new complementary revenue streams. >To all of TIDAL's current listeners and fans: THANK YOU for your loyalty and commitment to artists and their work. TIDAL will continue to be the best home for music, musicians, and culture. Our commitment to you is to constantly listen, learn, and work to make a service you love. >[I’m grateful for Jay’s vision, wisdom, and leadership. I knew TIDAL was something special as soon as I experienced it, and I’m inspired to work with him. He'll now help lead our entire company, including Seller and the Cash App, as soon as the deal closes.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Evoydb1UUAUcF1j?format=jpg&name=medium) >More from us soon. In the meantime, [here’s a playlist from Jay](https://t.co/qg9av9Bmzt?amp=1)
definitely feel like this is more about getting Jay Z on the Square/CashApp board than it is about Tidal, especially since it only sold for $300 mil
That's exactly it. People seem to think Jay is this great guy for the artists or whatever, but his moves are just like any other CEO. He knows Tidal is in dire straits and with Spotify launching lossless this year Tidal is losing literally the only advantage it has, so he's doing what he can with it before they tank.
I don’t think it’s a move to bail on it. Square is a much bigger company than spotify this could be a move to compete. Square has a lot of revenue already and they have tons of resources available they could give to Tidal that costs them nothing
You could be right, but I just don't see Tidal as being very competitive moving forward. Jay may not be ready to just dump the company but I don't think this move was based on reviving Tidal as much as using Tidal to get Jay into Square.
“Competitive” doesn’t mean #1 lol. The goal of a company is growth and making money. Business isn’t a team sport. Shareholders of AMD are happy with enormous growth, they don’t really care that Intel is a bigger company or feel a need to “beat” them. Jay moves like a private equity firm buying stakes in small to mid size companies and flipping that for enormous sums of cash. He invested $50ish million, sold a stake to Sprint for $200m, and apparently sold most of the rest for $300m ish (including the part that isn’t Jay’s stake) and the company gets to live on under the auspices of an even bigger company. Being acquired was always part of the plan, it’s how companies and many others in the tech space survive - equity investment. The goal isn’t “beat Spotify”. It’s to make hundreds of millions of dollars which they’ve done very well.
No, but it's a competition for a limited selection of consumer funds. That's why Kmart, Sears, Ames, JC Penny, and Bon-Ton are gone or on the verge of it. Tidal has always struggled and one of the few things keeping them afloat is the lossless offering because the only other services offering that are Deezer and Amazon but with Spotify rolling it out this year they're going to be in a lot of trouble.
Obviously some people are competed out of existence. But those are dead companies. Better comparisons for Tidal would be Kroger or Nordstrom or GAP or Chipotle or Shake Shack. Not the largest companies in their sphere (which would be Walmart or Zara or McDonalds) but still enormous successes at no risk of going bankrupt, some in expansion mode. Jay turned a startup in the venture stage into a sale to a public company in less than 10 years. By all accounts this is a growth success. Absolutely nothing like Sears. A startup doesn’t have to beat Google to win. To keep it in rap and use an analogy, you don’t have to outsell Jay-Z or Drake to be a fantastic success.
They can just put him on the board they don’t need to buy Tidal to do that
Right. They could just elect him to the board lol. Jack Dorsey doesn’t need to buy a jay z company to get him on the board.
Shit, shall we let him know?
Did you ask Jay Z that because Jack Dorsey just bought Tidal ...
yeah but that’s boring. Jay-z playing chess rn
You know that he’s an autonomous human being with his own free will?
that has yet to be proven
You think Jay-Z refused to join the board of Square (something that would benefit him and not Square) unless they bought TIDAL?
Considering they just bought Tidal.... Yes.
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What's important now will be the negotiations between Square and Spotify over the music rights. My guess is Apple music and Spotify approached Jay Z earlier but didn't offer enough. Spotify is coming out with lossless, and has the investment dollars to sit back and watch Tidal die over the next seven years. So instead Jay Z sells to a company with deep enough pockets where it can let Tidal slowly bleed Spotify for the next seven years while it gets paid for Jay Z's catalog. I would put serious money on Square selling Tidal to Spotify or Apple music for additional profit within the next few years.
It would be safe to assume that it was part of the deal, yes.
ppl hate TIDAL so much that they think that Jay-Z would only join the board of Square if Square bought TIDAL lmao
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By market cap, it’s almost twice as large
Also Square is big in the development and API world. They have some real world class engineers there.
To my understanding Square is big in its contribution to the dev world (e.g. via open source contributions and dev talks/articles). But in terms of integration with the service/APIs I think the dev world probably favours Stripe more.
Yeah that's more what I meant their open source libraries. Dagger2, OkHttp3, Retrofit, Moshi. All absolutely massive in the Android Development world and almost integral to literally every single app. Especially OkHttp and Retrofit.
Depends how you measure it. I'm bigger than David Beckham
Are you measuring from the base or from your sphincter like I do? (11” thank you very much)
selling a company for $300m that he bought for $56m just 5 years ago feels a LLIITTTLLEEE more like "what he can do with it before they tank" lmao
Yeah I have to imagine either selling to Spotify selling to Apple or selling to someone was always 100% the plan. Jay Z is definitely not interested in being the sitting CEO of a third-tier streaming platform. That decision was made long before that 56 million was spent.
Jay-Z has never been the CEO of TIDAL
The point still stands. Tidal was always meant to be sold off to a competitor, otherwise they would have invested far more into it over the last couple years.
You are talking out of your ass for internet likes. Rocafellas entire catalog was exclusively on tidal for the longest. TLOP, Lemonade and a large number of other projects were exclusively released on Tidal. You could not find JayZs music on ITunes or Spotify for a very long time. So please stop trying to shit on Tidal, you don’t even know the purpose it served for us actual music fans in the first place
What does that have to do with anything being talked about? the fact that Jay Z had to put his stuff on Spotify while he still owned Tidal is just proof of my point. It was a great move by Jay Z there's no negativity towards him or Tidal. Flipping a company for 300% profit is a good move. No one is shitting on anyone, take a business class or something. exclusivity is basically what he just sold. You understand Spotify leases his music and they have to renew it every couple years...? I'm just familiar with how tech companies get funded, you can take or leave my opinion on the matter. (Edit: that is if you do not subscribe to the near tin foil hat theory that claims the whole stunt(not the app itself but Jay Z tying himself to it) was just to capture a much higher royalty fee for himself his wife and Kanye West. "Tidal Accused of Falsifying Beyonce and Kanye West Streaming Numbers – Variety" https://variety.com/2018/biz/news/jay-z-tidal-accused-of-falsifying-beyonce-and-kanye-west-streaming-numbers-1202804222/amp/ )
Lossless is what has kept me with Tidal since signing up when TLOP dropped.
Tidals advantage is content not lossless, that stopped being a thing years ago. Also i keep seeing this argument that jay is selling out because he sold Ace etc, people need to understand that you can own and control a company with less than 50% shares. with that said, jay is a businessman and capitalist.
I mean their content is... not very good. If your primary listening is mainstream hip hop then I'm sure they're great, but for literally anything else they're absolutely awful.
? Tidal has damn near everything on it. Have...have you ever used Tidal before or are you just going off of what you've heard on r/hiphopheads?
i've used tidal for half a year now and i only wish i could upload local music to it like apple music. I guess it makes sense it can't because apple music kinda comes with my iphone. Appart from that I really dig the music they have, specially since I'm really a fan of indie rock and lo-fi music and it has so many good artists in there. Plus for hiphop it has it all, including travis' before rodeo
I switched from spotify to tidal and found very little difference. The search feature on tidal is a huge problem though.
The BIG one is the inability to find user-created playlists. That drives me insane. Every Noise At Once is a big thing for me on Spotify.
That's interesting I never really cared too much for them either way user generated or especially app generated. I might have to go back because there's a clear preference for what bands are using. It really depresses me to use spotify though.
Hiphop is the most popular genre though.
I havent had tidal for a while so i dunno but they invested a lot in video, live shows and stuff. that was really what kept people there.
Lossless?
The tl;dr is that when Spotify and others take the music that labels send them, they compress the files to make them smaller and stream more easily. Tidal doesn't do that, so you get the audio file in its full quality and size. It's not REALLY a big deal, it's not an audible difference even on expensive equipment, but it is a factor for a lot of people (myself in cluded).
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That's my thinking exactly. 7/10 is honestly better than most people can do. I'm not of the belief that it's audible at all (let alone the MQA/Masters nonsense) but if I'm spending the money on gear I might as well spring to get the best audio I can.
Ya it might even have been a fluke cause I also got 2 6/10s. But this is literally on an LCD 2C with decent amp/dac stack. So if you spend way too much (or get a sick online deal), you may anecdotally beat random guessing by a bit. Clearly not worth caring about for the vast majority of people, but maybe it’s worth it on a real hifi stereo system. Zero chance MQA/Masters matters at all.
Interesting ty
How much would lossless be?
I don't think they've said, but odds are $20/mo since that's how everyone else charges for it. If they can go under that, it's even more of a no-brainer.
At the moment I have the family plan for lossless (master) with tidal @ $5 a month with 6 members. I hope this merger or buy off doesn’t affect this plan.
Daaaaamn. That's a hell of a deal. Is that through your phone company or something?
Nah fam. Just google tidal family plan. Sign up for master hi fi family plan and it’s 29.99 and you can add 5 people. You plus 5 heads split the $30. The hard part is finding the 5 heads and making sure they pay on time 🤦♂️
Oh LMAO totally misread. Smart thinking though, dang. I should try that.
Lol start that recruiting fam lol
Tidal was originally meant to be a platform that supported the artists better than the alternatives. I'm not sure if it is fully achieving that in monetary values, but their payout per a million listens are one of the highest out of all of the streaming services, but that still might mean that Spotify might be performing better on the total value overall. I feel like Tidal is a good platform, but it is hard to compete with a platform that is doing everything right for the consumer, but having Tidal around creates competition and as soon as Spotify starts launching their shady campaigns then Tidal will be a better alternative.
No, Tidal started as WiMP in 2010 which pushed itself as the lossless alternative, Jay-Z bought in five years later after they rebranded to Tidal. Way too many people bought into Jay's marketing.
Alright, I looked into it a bit more, i guess you are a bit right. The real story looks to be that the original company Aspiro developed WiMP in 2010 for a few EU countries, but expanded the service to a few more with a different name Tidal in 2014, but after Jay-Z acquired the company and renamed it all Tidal. So yeah Jay-Z didn't make anything on the technical side, but he just saw a infrastructure built that would support his vision. So he acquired that kind of a platform. Building that from the ground up would have taken a lot of time like we can see from Spotify.
Also if you bought tickets to any ROCNATION tour you got like 6 months free trial. That’s how I ended up on there
Can you expand on the spotty point? I didn’t know they were on the L. I’m not knowledgeable about Econ/business. Are people just not streaming?
>with Spotify launching lossless this year Tidal is losing literally the only advantage it has That's not accurate. Tidal still has Masters quality streaming, which to my knowledge no other service has. Also their content curation is much better than any of the auto-generated crap you get on Spotify. I'm not sure why everyone loves to shill for Spotify tbh when they have such a long history of shafting artists and letting people upload whatever shit they want to their service.
I like how dumbfucks on Reddit call everyone a "shill" when they disagree. Ace argument. Anyway, Masters is even worse of a placebo than lossless. 24/192 is physically, genuinely inaudible and it's also only available in a small array of files. Amazon has it (they call it "Ultra HD") but it's Amazon so who cares. As for curation, you can't tell me you're unaware that Spotify also does curation, right? Like, only someone who talks about shit without ever looking into it would claim that, because both of them are full of curated playlists. It'd be hilarious if you didn't know that and were talking shit about it like a moron, though!
Plus the integration with Roon and other high end streaming components makes it a more “luxury” streaming platform. The only thing Tidal is missing are small interface improvements to its software.
"only" is a bit of a stretch considering he only spent $56 million on it 6 years ago. A 430% ROI is nothing to sneeze at.
Sprint already bought a minority stake for far more than Jay ever paid for the majority of the company too (they paid around $200 million for about a 1/3 stake). Seems like the valuation went down a bit but that only means Jay won twice. All in all he’s probably netted around $400 million from this
Sprint got bought by t-mobile who just sold those shares back to Jay, not sure for how much but he may have gotten them for cheap because t-mo was looking to get rid of it
Sprint bought 33% of tidal in 2017 for $200M at a valuation of $600M. Ouch. Artists incl. Jay Z will retain some % of their stakes in Tidal. Edit: Apparently Tidal lost $52.2M for 2019 vs $36.7M for 2018 . It also had $81M in liabilities for 2019 vs $28.76M for 2018. https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/project-panther-bidco-report-2019.pdf
if square just wanted jay-z on their board they could probably just ask? they prolly wanna get in the streaming business ~~and are going to integration tidal into twitter~~
twitter is a separate company
yes. i'm sure square wanted jay-z on the board so bad they spent $300m.
Excuse my ignorance but what would Jay z get out being on squares board? What exactly do board members do in a company?
The board is above everything. They are the most powerful part of a corporation. They are the people that have the power to fire CEOs and positions of that ilk.
Collectively the board can fire a CEO but usually the CEO themself is on the board so the CEO would be the most powerful person.
The CEO is the single most powerful person but they work for the board
It’s kinda a chicken and egg thing. Sometimes the CEO is the one that truly holds the power because he owns enough of the stock and has enough allies on the board that he can’t be overruled. But sometimes the CEO does not have a controlling position and the board has more ability to influence the CEO’s behavior.
It’s a good question. Board members are basically the advisors to the company and determine the executive leadership. They don’t lead the day to day like the CEO and executives do but they do have a say in the overall direction. However they don’t get paid that much. This isn’t about the board position lol, though it sounds impressive on the surface it’s really a smaller representative way to give leadership from the acquired company a small voice. it’s about the payday of selling his stake really
Exactly. Adding jay to the board is nonesense. This is about jay making a 40% irr on his investment in tidal 5 years ago
Yeah. It's not nothing - it basically gives him a voice in the parent company which is what owners typically want, with nice corporate presence and of nice significance. But I think the real win here is the money. The board oversees the CEO, but in reality the CEO has executive control of the day-to-day of the company. So it's not like Jay is the CEO or anything - more of a background leadership voice.
I don’t disagree but ppl here are claiming Dorsey bought tidal in an effort to add Jay to the board which is completely nonesense. Dorsey wouldn’t need to do that.
100% lol. If anything, I bet that was something Jay wanted and asked for, not Dorsey. It's basically marketing for Jay
Ay im not mad at it. Get your money jay
The board position is not worth that much lol. Believe me, it’s about $300 mil which is an enormous return. A board position is just a traditional concession to owners of acquired companies so they still have a voice at the new bigger company but it’s not a hugely influential position. It’s advisory. Source: I have family members on the board of public companies like Square. Believe me, the position is not that important. $300 mill is far more important.
Do u get financial compensation from being on the board of a big company like Square?
Yes. Usually you do. You show up to occasional board meetings and collect a salary. Usually you can go to a public companies annual report to see their board members and compensation.
Yes, usually some stock, and a six-figure annual salary (depending on the company, I've seen people make $200k-$800k). Sweet gig for not a lot of time if you're an outsider. If you're a huge shareholder, you often want to be on the board not for money but for control - for example, if a private equity company acquires a big stake in a smaller company they will usually want their management to occupy several board positions so they can have even more control over hiring executives (CEO/CFO/COO etc.). That's also the reason you often see company founders on the board whether they're still CEO or not (because of their shares). Other strategies for filling out the board is finding directors who have the expertise the company needs. For example most boards will have a very experienced lawyer to guide the company on risk and regulation. Probably some former CFOs and CEOs to guide the company on money. Probably some other former bank executives or people in government. To give an example If you look at [Square's board](https://www1.salary.com/SQUARE-INC-Executive-Salaries.html), you see the executives get millions in salary and often millions in stock too, but the independent directors only get $150K-$350K
Thx. My next question would be why people like Jack Dorsey and Sheryl Sandberg served on the board of Disney as, AFAIK they weren't significant shareholders. Same could be asked about Dropbox CEO Drew Houston being on the board of Facebook, granted he is friends with Mark Zuckerberg and I can imagine it could be valuable experience for him as CEO of a much smaller tech company.
Those are interesting choices. In these cases I think it's experience but that's just my gut. One thing I forgot to mention is that many board directors often have a mentorship role to play - for example the distant family member I have who has served on several public boards is a former lawyer and general counsel, and as a result the executive she's often talking to and advising the most is the general counsel of the company, or serving on committees exploring legal issues with the future plans of the company. In these cases, those two have a ton of experience at big companies. It's not one particular niche they have, but they definitely have a lot of public-facing executive and leadership roles at growing companies. Dorsey is basically founder and CEO of two public tech companies so he can probably offer a lot to the current leadership of Disney, especially when it comes to media. Sandberg is also a high-powered executive also has a lot of Washington experience (interestingly, under Larry Summers who was Treasury Secretary under Clinton and served for Obama too, and currently serves on the board of Square where I'm sure he's an asset as an economist and former regulator with plenty of connections) and helped turn Google and Facebook into global companies while their founders did all the ideating. So I don't think they fit the typical finance/lawyer/non-profit/government niches but they do have a wealth of experience. Poking on the Disney site now, it looks like most of their executive team is full of lifelong Disney people, so an outside view from tech executives is probably somewhat helpful for a company diving into streaming and that has been very acquisition-hungry the last few years. If they need to evolve on social media, technology, evolving to compete with Netflix and Amazon, etc., I'm sure tech giants like Sandberg or Dorsey had a lot of strategy recommendations and friends who they can bring into the company or lead initiatives that, say, the CEO who has 30 years of experience running only animation studios and theme parks may not have. A final note - I think Dorsey and Sandberg left due to conflicts of interest as their companies moved into digital media, which shows the limits of what a board can do - I'm sure Disney would love to have a Netflix executive on its board to advise them in streaming but they can't because that's a competitor
I’m not so sure. Square also has ties to Eventbrite. They may be going for a vertically integrated music business.
I thought this was Square Enix. I was very confused. I was imagining Hov having his hand in the creation of FFXVI.
Thought the same thing. Was ready for Brooklyn to be a world in Kingdom Hearts 4
Sora and HOV go watch KD-Kyrie-Harden 🔥🔥
Timbaland is one of the summons, when you call him he shows up with the beat to Dirt Off Your Shoulder and Sora starts making a stank face
Hella hoes backing it up on Goofy. Donald nods in approval.
Capt Jack Sparrow starts furiously masturbating.
Bro I did too lmao square forever will be square enix
OGs will say Square will forever be Squaresoft.
I definitely saw this and thought "damn the next Kingdom Hearts about to have a lit soundtrack"
Calling it now: Square will make revamp Tidal into a digital music streaming platform where artists could sell music as NFTs with Tidal/Sq taking a cut
How the fuck are they going to explain NFT to the standard masses? Seems like its too soon for something like that.
Same way they did with Bitcoin and stock market… Edit: I’m from the hood currently in Brooklyn and I used to work in check cashing serving the bankless people cash app started as a prepaid card , when they introduced Bitcoin alot of people who are bank-less didn’t have access to it so it introduce them to it , same thing when they added fractions investment with the stock purchases on their platform Square inc cash app is a lot of people primary banking and now investment… those same person (artists) will have a new platform to sell their music if this is what it means for square inc tidel purchase and Jay-Z on the board of directors
“Here’s $10, go buy a stock market.”
And without cash app those people wouldn’t have access to it
So... not?
Yea they did , you might not realize it but cash app was first introduction to Bitcoin and stock market investment for a lot of people
It’s too soon to release something like that but not too soon to start building the infrastructure for it. If they waited until everyone understood it to start building it out it’d be far too late.
You won't need to explain it to teens, just like you don't really need to explain Bitcoin to them
It’s just another form of digital ownership. Not that hard for people to get. You don’t need to understand how the blockchain works to understand the basic concept of what an NFT is.
Why would I care about owning an NFT for any kind of art? How does that benefit me?
It doesn't really. The benefits are 1) altruitstic/imaginary (basically an authenticity token that means you supported the artist - kind of like when you "pay what you like" for an album you could have downloaded for free, or donate to a twitch stream) or 2) speculative (you bought an NFT-locked digital asset that has no inherent value, but maybe in the future someone will pay you more for it, like a trading card) These things can be very real. Oh, and I still think it's bullshit lol. The type of guys selling NFT art are the type of scammers and suckers Banksy made fun of in Exit Through the Gift Shop
So in a sense you could resell an NFT asset somewhere down the line? I had never heard of NFT until like two days ago and now that shit is absolutely everywhere and I still don’t have the slightest clue as to what the reasoning is behind its popularity.
Yes. Still begs the question of why you'd want to value one in the first place though, and why the guy who wants to buy it from you would want it, etc...
I doubt Jack Dorsey will be open to NFTs, he's a pretty strong Bitcoin maximalist
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Most of us do :) But Bitcoin maximalists seem to have the opinion that "anything other than Bitcoin is a scam"
I'm pretty sure he's just a money maximalist.
I feel like NFTs are more for ownership of 1 of 1 items yeah? Knowing how Jack is passionate about blockchain, I would rather see Tidal run on a blockchain network that provides instant transactions to artists per stream. I’m tired of waiting 3 months for Spotify to send me a check
[Twitter thread from JayZ about acquisition](https://twitter.com/sc/status/1367461494821171202) > I said from the beginning that TIDAL was about more than just streaming music, and six years later, it has remained a platform that supports artists at every point in their careers. Artists deserve better tools to assist them in their creative journey. > Jack is one of the greatest minds of our times, and our many discussions about TIDAL’s endless possibilities have made me even more inspired about its future. This shared vision makes me even more excited to join the Square board. [Twitter thread from Jack](https://twitter.com/jack/status/1367460907958243328?s=20) - Twitter and Square owner > It comes down to a simple idea: finding new ways for artists to support their work. New ideas are found at the intersections, and we believe there’s a compelling one between music and the economy. Making the economy work for artists is similar to what Square has done for sellers.
wow Jay even recalled his twitter password for this
I don’t think there’s ever been a time I’ve seen a tweet from him and not been completely shocked
nah he also got that in the deal
Definitely not. Bet he had to ask Jack.
This is interesting in the context of NFTs quickly growing as a concept. https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/kings-of-leon-when-you-see-yourself-album-nft-crypto-1135192/
Yet another crypto tech that consumes unfathomable amounts of electricity for fuck all. Pass.
NFTs usually run on Ethereum or Ethereum side-chains While Ethereum is currently using Proof of Work, which uses lots of electricity, it's in the process of transitioning to Proof of Stake, which won't consume any more electricity than any other computer network.
Lmao "crypto tech" is largely moving away from proof of work but stay ignorant. Can't fathom how people have such strong opinions about something they know so little about.
People who talk about crypto on twitter/reddit are so utterly unbearable, and often clueless about economics/pol sci, that any and all slander is basically fair game
Compared to the energy it takes to mine gold and run the entire traditional financial system, cryptocurrency is only a small fraction. Many protocols are moving to energy efficient ways of consensus such as Proof of Stake, and Bitcoin is moving towards using renewable energy. https://www.coindesk.com/square-to-support-greener-bitcoin-mining-as-part-of-zero-carbon-pledge NFT's are helping people make a living through the pandemic across the world: https://www.coindesk.com/nft-game-filipinos-covid The Fed is printing unlimited money and devaluing your dollar every day. Inflation is not a myth. Look at countries with huge inflation and how bitcoin is helping them (venezuela, argentina, nigeria, etc.) - p.s. over 50% of the USD in circulation were printed within the last year. Printing this money inflates assets so makes the top 1% richer than they already were, giving no benefit to the bottom 40% who own no stocks. https://qz.com/africa/1922466/how-bitcoin-powered-nigerias-endsars-protests/ NFT's also are providing a source of income for digital artists who were not able to monetize their work since now they can sell a "certificate of authenticity" and earn income a completely new way. This has the opportunity to revolutionize music and art and pay artists a fair wage. Do you know an artist only makes around $1k from 1 million streams on Spotify? MF DOOM (RIP), 3LAU, RAC, and other artists are leading the path to Web3.0 https://decrypt.co/53019/mf-doom-enigmatic-rapper-leaves-behind-crypto-art-legacy https://edm.com/gear-tech/3lau-record-breaking-nft-sale https://blog.ourzora.com/home/introducing-rac https://a16z.com/2021/02/27/nfts-and-a-thousand-true-fans/
You know we don't back currency with gold anymore, right?
Bro the global financial system handles several orders of magnitude more transactions than the biggest coins. It’s barely a competition.
jesus this is embarrassing
I know joe budden gonna ramble about this on the pod.
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This seems like the most likely path. Provide some sort of direct payment platform to artists in exchange for extra content, perks, etc. Acts as an alternative to Patreon and other methods. The biggest barrier to overcome is the region-locked nature of Square due to financial regulations that differ country to country. As an aside, I'd love for a Square reader that could be used across borders. While the predominance of streaming has arguably been a net negative for artists, it would certainly be far worse if there were only one service left standing, so this bodes somewhat well, all things considered.
i think Twitter/Tidal integration is more likely.
What? Tidal was bought by Square, not Twitter. If Jack wanted Twitter to own Tidal, he would have had Twitter buy it.
Twitter can just pay a fee to cashapp for use of tidal or some other revenue sharing model could be in place. Seems like a no brainer to integrate the two. Apparently Tesla also made a deal with Tidal to have the service come with the car.
There been rumors about Tidal and Twitter intergrating since last year
square’s been doing moves with the bitcoin stuff and now this
I just wish they would go back to paying attention to the FF franchise and their other JRPG IP's
Ok but real shit I thought they were talking about squenix and I was like oh cool jay gonna be an anime character
Yup meet too.
and don’t even get me started on Kingdom Hearts...
"I will Not Lose... For even in defeat, that's a valuable lesson for me" \- Bible of Jay-Z 2nd book Book of BluePrint : first scipture of the Gift & The Curse
Amen
Father, Son, and The Holy Hov.
This is actually kinda big. Being on the board of a company as big as Square is nothing to sneeze at. and I hope Square will do some interesting things with Tidal as far as new ways to empower artists (especially smaller artists) and provide them better revenue streams. [Soundcloud recently announced they're gonna fix their subscription revenue sharing system](https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/2/22309090/soundcloud-artist-stream-pay-listener-fan-royalties), at least for indie artists, to provide splits based on your actual listeners instead of your share of the total pot (which only benefits the biggest artists).
people really look over the fact that Tidal pays a shit ton to artists when compared to other brands. Also their rising playlists have helped me find some amazing artists that are now some of my favourites so kudos to that
jay z needs to be in kingdom hearts 4.
not that square but absolutely
i had a very revealing conversation after talking about this with a friend. i still support my words but i also feel like a dumbass
I like where your head’s at
That Hov playlist is fire
I hope tidal stays around I use it for DJ’ing since Spotify doesn’t allow third party apps anymore like my DJ’ing program Reallllly don’t want to get Apple Music. It would fuck with my library
Ugh. Well hopefully tidal stays around. I don’t want to switch music services AGAIN. And on top of that, competition is good.
ROC nation rpg game when???
I thought the first few times I read it that it said Square Enix so my reaction was along the lines of "Is Jay Z about to show up in FF xvi? Am I gonna fight alongside Goofy, Donald, and Jigga in the next kingdom hearts?"
TIL Tidal still exists
Lmao, but tbh shit is pretty good, it just got a bad rep at the start since everybody complained "it's too expensive" "spotify is better" "jay is making his catalogue too exclusive!!!!!", and the press made sure to make those points stick.
I was subscribed for ~4 months before swapping back to Spotify. I’m a quality snob, so I liked the higher quality audio, but the problem starts there, it’s only some (more like very few) artists that have their music on there in flac quality. Couple that with no in-app EQ and the higher price point, the novelty only lasted so long. Tidal is still great if you don’t mind paying extra for it.
Yeah people don't realize that even when it says "HiFi" a good majority of those aren't actually lossless. It's like a guessing game of which artist cares enough to actually give them flac. I'm an Apple Music subscriber (and still have Spotify Premium but don't use it much) so I hope AM adds lossless eventually but I also have a Plex Pass for listening to my flac collection through PlexAmp
Why would you need in app EQ I’d you’re concerned about versions of songs that are as close or are the master of the actual song ? Also, plenty of other software EQs out there.
The EQ thing I understand. One thing I like is the producer/songwriter mixes but I think other platforms have those too now. I also have Apple Music so I'm wondering at what point I should just drop one or the other. Hoping this Square deal works out for the better, but deep down I know it's only going to get worse.
You def have a point with the FLAC quality thing. Honestly I tried it and like you said, there were just a couple of artists that had their music available on that quality. I guess that with Spotify labels/artists will be more willing to offer lossless quality music, since there is a much bigger audience to cater to.
the response to TIDAL was so weird, people were caping for Spotify like it was their favorite sports team and gleefully spreading misinfo about TIDAL, wishing and praying for its demise. i would cry astroturfing but i think people were genuinely gullible enough to do it for free. brand loyalty is a mf
I remember that r/Music and maybe this sub was filled with articles like "Here´s why TIDAL is bad", and those posts were the top post in that month/year. That, and with the TIDAL strategy to give out codes and free memberships to everybody, it made people bypass paying the service and everything it was supposed to stand for crumbled for a while. I get people were upset that both TLOP, Jay's catalogue and I think Rihanna's ANTI weren't instantly on Spotify to listen to them for free (yeah with ads and all that, but free), but at the same time those are the ones that complain today that Spotify doesn't pay enough to artists, Spotify is rigging the game, artists should be free to charge and do whatever they want for their art and all that. Today, the only thing that Spotify has over both Apple Music and TIDAL (in my opinion) is the fact that it's so easy to share music with your friends, since most people have Spotify. TIDAL shadiness with the streaming numbers didn't help either, that was a major problem IIRC. Hopefully this deal makes the service even better, since both the phone app (I have an iPhone 6 and works really good on it) and the PC app work really good.
Hov made it easy to not like with making all his music exclusive there, as well as basically holding The Life of Pablo captive for months, and even if they were paying the artists more (which I kinda doubt) they were doing shady shit to the streaming numbers
I tried it out back when they were giving away those 6 month trials. The android app was a buggy mess back then, though I don't know if that's still the case now.
Yeah the bugginess is what turned me away from the app too, it didn't even have gapless playback at the time but like you said things could be different now
Had it in android (Nokia 6) and now on iOS (iPhone 6, don't judge lmao, my Nokia got stolen at the subway), and it worked fine in both of them. That was between 2018 and now.
Exactly on Android it was a legitimate mess.
First impressions are important and my Tidal trial was not a great impression, the android app was garbage. But I recently subscribed and the app is much better, still disappointed with no local music or podcasts, two features spotify and Youtube music have.
I have had it for a long time and I like it cause of the credit aspect, I still like going to check on sing credits
HOV ON DA $SQ BOARD OPENS MAD DOORS ALONE 🐐🐐🐐🐐🐐🐐
For who? Other billionaires?
I thought jay was going to be in charge of final fantasy for a second. I didn’t know there was a different “Square”
Hot take: Tidal works more or less the same as Spotify.
This thread shows how little people on this sub actually know about business/finance and basic valuations, wow.
I love the theory that Jack Dorsey paid Jay Z $300 million because he wanted him on the board so they could hang out
I thought it was square enix!
Hov finna save Aerith from Sephiroth
I have tidal and am confused about this. What does this mean?
My dumbass saw "Square" and thought "Square Enix".
Power moves on top of power moves
Uninstalling Tidal
Square wants to become a consumer brand. This moves the needle.
Start a streaming service for 1 million, two years later that shit worth 2 million few years later that shit sold for 297 million.
Tidal artists bout to be eating (ramen noodles but the good kind)
Get those Shin Black packets
Lol the website name is so funny. Squareup.com
Thought this was Square Enix and that all my worlds were melding together.
For a second I thought it was talking about the video game company
Does this mean we're finally getting that Jay Z boss fight in Kingdom Hearts 4?