Jay Z has repeatedly proven himself to be one of the smartest business minds in the entertainment industry. That said, even the best sometimes make mistakes and right now it’s looking like Jigga’s decision to fork over $56 million to buy music streaming service Tidal has been a colossal bust. Bloomberg reports that Jay Z is suing former Tidal owner Schibsted ASA for allegedly misrepresenting the number of subscribers it had at the time it sold the service to S. Carter Enterprises LLC back in 2015.
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“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,” Tidal said in a statement emailed to Bloomberg. “As a result, we have now served legal notice to parties involved in the sale.”
Bloomberg says that Jay Z is going to try to get some of the money back that he paid for Tidal, although it’s not clear how successful he’ll be in this endeavor.
Tidal at the moment has over 3 million paid subscribers, which isn’t a bad number but still pales in comparison to the 30 million paying subscribers counted by Spotify and the 11 million paid subscribers for Apple Music. Tidal has also been repeatedly set back by a string of high-level executive departures and it definitely hasn’t lived up to the hopes that Jay Z had for it when he bought it last year.
