A senior Apple executive has revealed that the company has no plans to buy out Tidal.
Jimmy Iovine, who heads up Apple Music, denied rumours that Apple plans to buy the Tidal music streaming service, which is currently owned by rapper Jay Z. Speaking to Buzzed News, Iovine said: “We’re really running our own race. We’re not looking to acquire any streaming services.”
Back in June, the Wall Street Journal published a report that said Apple was considering a buy-out of rival service Tidal, which was bought by Jay Z in March 2015 for $56 million, in a bit to boost its own Apple Music business.
Wall Street analyst Gene Muster, of Piper Jaffray, previously predicted that Apple would have had to pay $500 million to acquire Tidal, which is nearly ten times what Jay Z paid for the platform. But that’s small change for Apple, which had $200 billion in cash reserves at the start of 2016.
Apple launched its own music-streaming service – Apple Music – in June last year, landing in over 100 countries upon release. It also debuted a new Internet radio station called Beats 1 on the new platform. This month, Apple Music was confirmed to have over 17 million paid subscribers – an impressive figure. However, it’s still falls short of market leader Spotify, which currently claims 39 million paying subscribers and over 100 million active users.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
