Jay Z's TIDAL streaming service was launched with much fanfare, and it has posted exclusive releases from heavyweights Kanye West, Rihanna and Beyonce.
But so far it hasn't generated profits.
In 2015, Jay Z's first year of ownership, TIDAL's parent company Aspiro (which basically is TIDAL) lost $28 million.
That wouldn't be such a big deal if TIDAL was growing at an Uber-like rate.
However, Aspiro's revenues only rose 30 percent between 2014 and '15, despite all of the hype and investment. Competitor Spotify's revenues doubled over that time period.
TIDAL has said they've expanded their paid user base to 4.2 million. But that's still a lot less than Apple (17 million) and Spotify's paid tier (30 million.)
The Wall Street Journal wrote this about TIDAL's struggles since Jay Z came aboard.
The spill of red ink at Aspiro illustrates the challenge the music-streaming service faces in competing with much-larger rivals such as Spotify AB, Apple Inc.’s Apple Music and Google’s parent Alphabet Inc. Despite significant marketing efforts, Tidal is stuck between consumers reluctant to pay for tunes they can easily access for free, and record labels, which often are demanding upfront payment for copyright fees.Of course if a certain computer giant named after a fruit would swoop in and pay big money for TIDAL's artist roster none of this would matter.
Which is exactly what TIDAL shareholder Kanye West was ranting about earlier this summer.