With more than 17 million subscribers acquired in just little over a year, Apple Music is far from a flop or a disappointment. In fact, Apple Music, by any reasonable business metric, is already an impressive success story.
That notwithstanding, Apple Music still isn’t anywhere close to catching up to Spotify which, according to a recent tweet from CEO Daniel Ek, now boasts more than 40 million paying subscribers.
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With Apple dead set on attracting new subscribers and pulling away existing subscribers from Spotify, rumors of Apple’s interest in acquiring Jay-Z’s Tidal music service began to sprout up a few months ago
Specifically, a report from The Wall Street Journal this past June claimed that Apple was toying with the idea of picking up Tidal as a means to bolster its subscriber count, become more competitive with Spotify, and last but not least, pick up music streaming rights for artists not currently under the Apple Music umbrella.
Rumors of Apple’s interest in Tidal only picked up steam amid reports that Tidal was bleeding money, prompting some to speculate that Apple could pick up the company at a bargain basement price.
Even Kanye West couldn’t help but chime on the Apple/Tidal acquisition rumors.
https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/759449038097747968
But in true Apple fashion, the company is planning to go it alone and has no plans to acquire Tidal anytime soon, if ever. During an interesting interview with Buzzfeed, Apple Music chief Jimmy Iovine bluntly said that Apple isn’t interested in buying out any streaming service.
“We’re really running our own race,” Iovine said. “We’re not looking to acquire any streaming services.”
