I. Music & Tech

Tidal Waving Goodbye?

The cost of doing business in the music streaming space is tough for even the most well funded tech giants, but for Jay Z’s tidal it seems this cost is threatening their survival. Even after selling a 33% of their business to Sprint in the beginning of 2017, last week sources from Norway’s, Darens Naeringsliv reported that Tidal could be looking at a six month runway. With the constant speculation over who will arise the victor in the music streaming arms race, Tidal has always been treated as somewhat of an “underdog”. Read more about their status here.

$19B for Spotify

Over the past year Spotify has solidified themselves as the leader in the music streaming space, and it seems that momentum is continuing in 2018. After reporting the milestone of $60 million paid subscribers early in the year, this past week the music streaming service achieved a $19 billion dollar valuation. With shares currently priced at $4000 dollars and plans of listing on the stock market at some point in the near future, this is tremendous news. Read more about Spotify’s progress here.

 

Musical.ly’s $50 Million Fund For Musers

After closing a $1 Billion acquisition with Chinese internet company Bytedance, short form music video creation platform musical.ly is already investing in a creator fund. This past week musical.ly announced plans to invest $50 million dollars in their community of “musers”, by offering opportunities such as scholarships and supporting content ventures with media partners interested in the platform. This innovative investment seems to be strategically sound, especially since the engagement of their users and the content created is what yielded them such a fruitful acquisition in the first place. Read more about the future of musical.ly here.  

Courtesy of LineForLine. Artists get started here.