Saturday, June 6, 2026

Report: Jay Z Buys Digital Streaming Service Available Only In Poland, Sweden, Germany, Norway, Denmark

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Reports from Bloomberg and elsewhere say Jay Z has bought Aspiro AB, a media company that has a digital music streaming service in Poland, Sweden, Germany, Norway, and Denmark.

OK, why not? It cost his holding company $56 million. That’s what he and Beyonce spend on vacations.

Aspiro has WiMP (really, a terrible name for the US) and Tidal. The latter sells and streams high end audio files which could only be appreciated fully on Sony’s excellent new Walkman A17 or Neil Young’s Pono player. The latter took quite a beating this week on Yahoo with a scathing piece by David Pogue.

Meantime, if Jay Z had wanted a library of high definition tracks, he could check out hdtracks.com, the single best service which already has a huge catalog.

But a challenger to Spotify? Not here in the U.S. Maybe WiMP and Tidal are the future for Europe. But my sense is that Spotify is entrenched at this point, with Pandora right behind.

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Roger Friedman
Roger Friedmanhttps://www.showbiz411.com
Roger Friedman is the founder and editor-in-chief of Showbiz411. He wrote the FOX411 column on FoxNews.com from 1999 to 2009 and previously edited Fame magazine and wrote the "Intelligencer" column at New York magazine. His bylines have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, Vogue, Details, and the Miami Herald. He is a voting member of the Critics Choice Awards (Film and Television branches), and his movie reviews are tracked by Rotten Tomatoes. is articles have appeared in dozens of publications over the years including New York Magazine, where he wrote the Intelligencer column in the mid 90s and covered the OJ Simpson trial, and Fox News (when it wasn't so crazy) where he covered Michael Jackson. With D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, he co-produced the 2002 documentary "Only the Strong Survive," which screened at Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.

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