Apple Discussing Acquisition of Tidal Music Service

The online music streaming industry has become ultra-competitive over the past couple years, but two of the biggest platforms could be merging to create a potentially dominant force.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple is reportedly in talks to potentially acquire Tidal, the music streaming service owned by Jay Z. Tidal had previously been involved in rumors with Samsung to acquire their music service back in February, but the discussions didn’t lead to anything. If money was the problem, however, Apple would be in a much better situation to acquire the platform.

Tidal is the first ever artist-owned streaming service, with co-owners including a long list of top-tier artists that includes Rihanna, Beyonce, Kanye West, Jack White, Chris Martin, J. Cole and a number of other big names.

A merger of Apple Music and Tidal would make sense. The two companies are in direct competition with Spotify, which is dominating them in the marketplace. According to a report from April, Spotify dominated the competition with 30 million subscribers, while Apple Music and Tidal lagged behind with just 11 million and 3 million subscribers respectively.

While combined the two services still around half of the subscribers that Spotify has, the Apple Music and Tidal have similar business models that stand out compared to their main competitor. Both companies have begun focusing on exclusive releases from major artists like Drake, The 1975 for Apple and Beyonce and Kanye West for Tidal. In fact, Tidal’s subscribers reportedly doubled after the release of Kanye’s The Life of Pablo, showing the value of exclusive releases.

The two sides are only in discussions right now, but if Apple Music and Tidal joined forces, it would make for an interesting race against Spotify.