Jay-Z Sues Former Owners Of Tidal

Jay Z has filed a law suit against the former owners of his streaming service, Tidal for $15 million.

For what has been longer than a year after his purchase of the streaming service Tidal for $56 million, Jay Z feels that he was cheated by the former owners. According to USA Today, the Scandinavian company, Aspiro, and major shareholders Norway’s Schibsted Media Group and Verdane Capital, a Stockholm-based private equity fund, sold the company on an alleged false subscription total.

“It became clear after taking control of TIDAL and conducting our own audit that the total number of subscribers was actually well below the 540,000 reported to us by the prior owners,” the streaming service said in a statement sent to USA TODAY. “As a result, we have now served legal notice to parties involved in the sale. While we cannot share further comment during active legal proceedings, we’re proud of our success and remain focused on delivering the best experience for artists and fans.”

In response to Jay Z’s allegations and the law suit before them. Schibsted’s Anders Rikter told BreakIt news agency that “we want to point out that it was a publicly traded company that was acquired, with what it means by the transparency of financial reporting. Otherwise we have no comments,” which was also reported by USA today.

It was back in February of 2015 was when Jay Z first placed his bid for the streaming service, which was owned by Aspro, through Project Panther Bidco Ltd. Then in March of the same year he relaunched the Tidal that we are familiar with today. However, the company has grown substancially since this release. Just last week they announced surpassing of 3 million subscribers and that Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo helped with 250 million streams in the first ten days of being available. With almost half of the subscribers paying the $19.95 monthly fee for Tidal’s lossless CD-quality audio and the rest paying the $9.95 monthly subscribtion for high quality audio below the former, the company is seeing quit the successs. There are also talks of adding movies to the list of features but no official comments have been released to this regard.