“We’re especially interested in creating new adjacent opportunities in service of the whole artist experience and their experience with their fans in addition to the streaming service,” Dorogusker said. In an interview with Billboard after the acquisition was announced last month, Dorogusker said that while the core streaming service would remain an important part of Tidal, Square wants to expand Tidal to fully serve artists across the board. He previously lead the development of the ubiquitous Square Reader and lead the team that launched Apple’s lightning connector during his time at the tech company. Square will soon begin its search for a permanent head of Tidal, but Dorogusker should provide a stable hand to lead the streaming service forward. This story was originally featured on Fortune.Square Is Acquiring a Majority Stake in Tidal for $297M That may be a mistake given the size of the competition. “We’re going to start small and focus on the most critical needs of artists and growing their fan bases,” Dorsey said on Thursday. Nothing is stopping Apple or Spotify from paying big money to pop stars to convince them to release NFTs via their services. (Square declined to disclose how many subscribers Tidal has, but analysts say it’s likely less than 1% of the global market.) Then again, Square could create tools for Tidal artists that wouldn’t require a Tidal subscription to sell T-shirts, downloads, or even NFTs.Īnd larger competitors may have more money than Square and Tidal to spend on building new ways to help musicians make more money by promoting sales of merchandise and other items. Though Tidal is popular with artists, it has far fewer subscribers than rivals such as Spotify and Apple Music. That amounts to 56% of Square’s total quarterly sales, more than its older retail payments and non-crypto Cash app businesses combined. Given how Bitcoin’s price has increased since, it’s little surprising that revenue from that business rose nearly ninefold in the fourth quarter of this year to $1.8 billion. People using the app to buy and sell Bitcoin generated $217 million of revenue for Square in the fourth quarter of 2019. Helping Tidal musicians sell NFTs would also bring into play Square’s success with adding Bitcoin to its Cash app service. People who buy the tokens will get additional album art, bonus downloads, and other perks. Musicians are starting to look at NFTs too, with Kings of Leon planning on Friday to become the first band to release digital tokens tied to a new album. In just the past few months, the value of NFT transactions has grown to hundreds of millions of dollars. While a digital work can be easily copied, the NFT cannot, giving buyers a stronger sense of ownership. Those are the unique digital trackers created using blockchain technology that a broad range of artists have started attaching to their work and selling at auction. To start with, Square could help musical artists pitch their merchandise to 36 million Cash app users.ĬEO Jack Dorsey, who also partnered with Jay-Z on a Bitcoin investment fund, further elaborated on Twitter that the Square-Tidal mashup is focused on “finding new ways for artists to support their work” with “entirely new listening experiences to bring fans closer together, simple integrations for merch sales, modern collaboration tools, and new complementary revenue streams.”ĭorsey didn’t mention the elephant in the room, NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. The next move will be to “explore new artist tools, listener experiences, and access to financial systems that help artists be successful.” Square “set a high standard for building elegant, accessible, and fair tools for sellers and individuals,” said Jesse Dorogusker, Square’s head of hardware, who will oversee Tidal, in a statement. That could be a template for helping musicians on Tidal better connect with-and make money from-their fans. Square developed a lot of technical know-how and software tools to help merchants not just take payments from consumers but also stay connected with them and encourage them to shop more. Tidal could be just the first example of another avenue for expansion. Could Square follow that strategy by moving beyond consumer payments to retailers into handling all sorts of consumer online transactions?Īlready, Square has branched out from its core business into helping people transfer money to each other via its Cash app, most recently adding Bitcoin transfers and trading. Amazon, before it became the everything store, sold only books. Still, the deal could be significant for Square if it kicks off an expansion beyond its core payments business.
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