Tidal Track

JACK, who runs Twitter, was just trying to get JAY, who has 3 million followers on Twitter but hadn't uttered a word to them in more than two years, to say something. A $297 million payment in exchange for a little engagement. And it worked.

That's what Thursday's blockbuster music tech deal was about, right?

It certainly wasn't just about streaming music, was it?

The basic deets; Jack's other company, SQUARE, paid $297 million for a "significant majority" of TIDAL, which Jay bought from its Norwegian founders for $56 million in 2015. Jay reportedly gave nearly half the company, in equity chunks of 3 percent each, to 16 artist partners including KANYE WEST, RIHANNA, JACK WHITE and DAFT PUNK in exchange for access to exclusive music. Tidal didn't get all that much exclusive stuff in the end and most of it, including BEYONCÉ's LEMONADE and Jay's own catalog, has long ceased to be exclusive. Those artists got a hell of a deal, and they'll still have an ownership stake when the deal closes. Jay sold a third of the company to SPRINT in 2017 and, per the Wall Street Journal, bought that 33 percent back (price not disclosed) before selling to Square, which paid, to quote TECHCRUNCH, "a minute fraction of a single percent of its market capitalization."

For that piece of change, Square gets a minor player in streaming music, which the market is valuing at a significantly lower figure than it did a few years ago. But it also gets Jay, hip-hop's smartest artist/businessman (he'll join Square's board), a continuing relationship with his A-list partners and a brand that understands how to connect hip-hop artists and hip-hop fans. In interviews Thursday, JESSE DOROGUSKER, the Square exec who'll run Tidal for now, talked less about Tidal's core streaming business than about ancillary opportunities like concert tickets and merchandise and coming up with new ways for artists to monetize their music. Artist services, too. The Journal reported that Dorogusker mentioned the idea of making loans based on Tidal data, which conceivably could add Square/Tidal to the list of companies disrupting the traditional label system by offering artists an alternative way to finance their music.

Jack, in his own series of tweets, gave streaming its due: "We’ll work on entirely new listening experiences to bring fans closer together." Which, weirdly, sounds like the most ambitious, and most difficult, item on the agenda. The market's a lot more saturated than it was just a few years ago and competition is fierce. And it might not matter. Jay might have entered with a streaming service and exited with something else altogether. Then again—read that first tweet again—maybe he knew all along.

Two Turntables, No Microphone

And in social music news, TURNTABLE.FM, an app that music fans have been wishing back from the grave for years, appears to have heard them. And it appears to have cloned itself. More on this soon, but a potentially huge development for social-starved music fans.

It's Friday

And that means there's new music from DRAKE, who surprise-dropped his SCARY HOURS 2 EP (there's a proper album somewhere on the horizon)... LIL DURK, via a compilation album spotlighting his OTF label... KINGS OF LEON, which you're welcome to bid a few Bitcoins on at your local NFT gallery if streaming it on SPOTIFY is a little too bourgeois for your tastes... Colombian singer/songwriter CAMILO... Congolese-American percussionist KIAZI MALONGA... Swedish pop singer ZARA LARSSON... Jazz great PAT METHENY, stepping outside his comfort zone with an album of classical guitar compositions... The VACCINES, who have FDA approval to cover songs by KACEY MUSGRAVES and WAXAHATCHEE on their new EP but are not yet approved for medical use... And albums by JANE WEAVER, ADULT MOM, DENZEL CURRY & KENNY BEATS, OMB PEEZY, YBN ALMIGHTY JAY, WARHOL.SS, CHASE ATLANTIC, JUDITH HILL, VISIONIST, PHOTAY, JIMBO MATHUS & ANDREW BIRD, FRUIT BATS, MOTHER OF MARS (new band feat. VITO ROCCOFORTE and GABRIEL ANDRUZZI of the RAPTURE), ARAB STRAP (first album in 16 years), JOE DYSON, GRETCHEN PARLATO, HILARY HAHN, NEIL COWLEY, BERNICE, the MICROPHONES (vinyl-only release of ambient noise), REGIONAL JUSTICE CENTER, A DAY TO REMEMBER, PAUL STANLEY & SOUL STATION, DEMON HUNTER, WITHERFALL, WORN, AZITA, PAINTED SHRINES (JEREMY EARL of WOODS and GLENN DONALDSON of the SKYGREEN LEOPARDS), TIGERS JAW, IAN SWEET, GARRISON STARR, GABRIELLE, JAZ ELISE, ALEX BLEEKER (solo album from REAL ESTATE bassist), JAY GONZALEZ (of DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS), JOHN SHARKEY III, TORY LANEZ, the SPILL CANVAS, CHEVELLE... And the COMING 2 AMERICA soundtrack, featuring BOBBY SESSIONS & MEGAN THEE STALLION, YG & BIG SEAN, TEYANA TAYLOR and TIWA SAVAGE, but no new music, I'm terribly sorry to report, from SEXUAL CHOCOLATE.

Rest in Peace

HENRY GOLDRICH, longtime owner of MANNY'S MUSIC, the absolute, unchallenged king of New York music retail. The prime minister of West 48th Street. The man who sold JIMI HENDRIX and ERIC CLAPTON their first wah-wah pedals, who said GUNS N' ROSES were welcome to shoot a video in the store "but we’re not shutting down for them," and who advised every young star who came through his doors (which was basically all of them) to be careful with their money. May all of you live to have an obituary like this one day. I still regret not buying that pink lefty Les Paul, the only one I've ever seen. But I, too, was being careful with my money... No Wave musician and photographer BARBARA ESS, whose bands included Y PANTS, DISBAND and the STATIC... JOSH HUMISTON, an agent and partner at AGENCY FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS.