JAY-Z and Jack Dorsey held a half-hour conference on Twitter Spaces that outlined the future of the Tidal music platform.
Tidal was recently acquired by Jack Dorsey-owned Square in a deal that keeps Jay-Z on board.
Dorsey outlined how the pair started the acquisition talks: “We started talking a year ago now and saw so many parallels. I’d tell you stories about our work around helping small businesses — most of the financial industry is working against them.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's payments-processing company Square on Thursday agreed to buy a majority ownership stake in Tidal, a music streaming service owned by rapper Jay Z, for $297 million in cash and stock. Colette Luke has more.
“And in conversation, it just became so apparent that there were so many parallels in spirit because of what a musician and a small business is going through.
“What really dawned on me was how weak some of the tool sets are for artists, with analytics and data, to understand what they’re doing and help them inform their decisions, especially considering other revenue streams like merchandise and touring, and NFTs. It felt a little weird on the surface, but when you delve down there’s a lot in common.”
In an online gathering that brought music fans and artists together, Jack Dorsey revealed that Tidal would become a creative and business platform for musicians.
“When Jay and I had our initial conversations, the biggest opportunity we saw was the tools — artists have very few access to data, information, analytics and there’s not enough direct connection to those tools and the tool spaces are rather weak in comparison to other industries,” Dorsey said.
“We want to add commerce and make it easy to collaborate and publish and take away all the friction points that most artists have to deal with.
“Any tools that we build, the intention is that wherever an artist wants to go with them, they go. We’re not interested in creating a closed ecosystem. We’re going to focus on those tools to make the artist shine and give them what they need to thrive in every way.”
The partnership between the music and tech businessman, Jack and Jay-Z, is important for the global music industry. For the first time in the history of music, someone who understands technology has partnered with a successful musician and we are beginning to see from their vision how this will impact the musicians.
The plan, as unveiled by Jay-Z and Jack, sounds like a plan worthy of attention by the global music industry.
