Tidal’s 2015 Numbers In The Red

Music streaming service Tidal recorded a loss of $28 million in 2015, the same year it was purchased by Jay Z and a group of other musicians.

Photo: Brad Barket / Invision / AP

Global Citizen Festival, Great Lawn @ Central Park, New York City

A legal filing showed Tidal’s holding company, Aspiro AB, posted a net loss of $28 million, compared with approximately $10.4 million the previous year, the Wall Street Journal reports. During the same period the company’s revenue rose 30 percent to approximately $47 million.

Multiple sources were reporting earlier in the summer that Apple and Tidal were in exploratory talks for the tech company to potentially buy out the smaller service. Tidal’s 4.2 million paying subscribers are currently dwarfed by Apple Music’s 17 million and Spotify’s 30 million.

Spotify is also spending more than it is taking in, posting a net loss for the year. The competition for subscribers intensified this year with exclusive releases from the likes of Frank Ocean and Beyoncé and claims of playlist manipulation to bury specific artists with exclusive deals.

Jay Z is actually currently suing Aspiro on the grounds that he was misled in terms of how many subscribers the service had when he purchased it.

Photo: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, file

MTV Video Music Awards at Madison Square Garden in New York.

The rap mogul and Kanye West also face a lawsuit claiming they acted in bad faith when West tweeted, “My album will never never never be on Apple.” The album, The Life of Pablo, was made available on Spotify and Apple Music a little more than one month after its release.