Jay Z has bid $56 million on Aspiro, a Swedish company behind two music streaming services, WiMP and Tidal, The New York Times reports. His offer has already received preliminary acceptance from Aspiro's board.
WiMP and Tidal stream high-fidelity audio, as the Times points out, which places them in the same market as Neil Young's Pono player and Sony's luxury Walkman. WiMP isn't yet available in the United States, while Tidal was introduced in September.
Tidal subscriptions run for $20 a month—twice the price of Spotify, which is considered the current giant in the North American streaming industry.
Read Station to Station, Eric Harvey's piece on the history of streaming music. And read Mark Richardson's "The Myth and the Reality of the $43 Download", about high-quality audio.
