Jay Z, the man best known as having a Shane Warne-high score of problems, has struck a neat deal to take ownership of Swedish company Aspiro for a cool USD$56 million (approximately AUD$73m). Aspiro is the operation behind streaming services WiMP and Tidal, that both offer high-fidelity music and video streaming, as well as an editorialised curation of new and old music managed by experience music journalists.
Not much is known about Jay Z’s intentions with regards to his new property, but music streaming is a rather large concern in northern Europe, with 80% of music sales in Sweden flowing from streaming. Rumours abound that Apple is planning to open a similarly curated and editorialised service in the near future.
WiMP is so far only available Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Poland, whilst Tidal is available in almost every EU country, as well as Canada and the US, Singapore and South Africa, but not in Australia, so those antipodean audiophiles among us will have to twiddle their thumbs just a little bit longer.
