Jay Z says he’s suing Tidal’s former owners for duping him into buying the streaming service. The artist and business mogul sent out a letter to former shareholders in Tidal/WiMP owner Aspiro, letting it be known that he believes the number of subscribers were purposely misleading at the time he took ownership. Jay Z’s financier, Project Panther Bidco, acquired Tidal in early 2015 under the impression that their total of worldwide subscribers were 503,000. Jay Z bought Tidal and the parent company Aspiro for $57 million. The company posted a $10 million loss in 2014. Jay Z, however, believes the state of the company was way more worse off than that. Former shareholders aren’t taking his letter too kindly. According to a Norwegian news outlet, Schibsted Communications Manager Anders Rikter wanted to make it known that it was impossible to fake the numbers as a publicly traded company. “We want to point out that it was a publicly traded company that was acquired, [which means] transparency of financial reporting [was required]. Otherwise we have no comments.” Tidal is now 3 million subscribers strong. The announcement came on the heals of Kanye’s The Life of Pablo release, which Ye says was streamed 250 million times in the first two weeks. Photo credit: Film Magic
