Cultura Voice

  Will Jack Dorsey and Square be able to transform TIDAL into an industry-leading streaming service complete with a suite of premier financial tools for artists? That’s the vision… though Jay-Z could be forgiven for not caring too much either way. Mr Carter has just completed the sale of 80% of TIDAL to Square in a deal now confirmed to be worth $302 million – around six times the price he originally paid for the platform back in 2015. Jay-Z wasn’t the only one chucking around impressive financial figures this week. Merck Mercuriadis‘ Hipgnosis acquired a catalog from songwriter/producer Andrew Watt for a price MBW estimates was in the eight figures, and upwards of $45 million. (Rumors suggest Mercuriadis has also closed the purchase of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ song catalog for around $150m – but no confirmation has been forthcoming on that one so far.) Elsewhere, Primary Wave announced a multi-million dollar acquisition of its own, picking up the publishing catalog of songwriter...

Telephone companies are in love with music again. Spotify recently  announced a partnership with Samsung to become the phone giant’s “go-to” music streaming service, for both its phones and smart/voice assistant Bixby. Spotify’s  stock price shot up on the day of the announcement. Should the music industry be getting similarly giddy? Spotify’s link-up with Samsung is one of a spate of recent deals between digital platforms and major telephone companies. US-based telco Verizon is  now offering a free six months of Apple Music to Verizon Unlimited consumers, while rival Sprint is offering an Unlimited Plus plan that includes TIDAL baked right into it. Even Pandora last week  announced that its Plus service will be bundled with T-Mobile for free for a year (so long as customers redeemed their code in time). Suddenly, the idea of simply obsessing over subscriber numbers feels a little  antiquated, when every major music streaming service is further lock...