Friday, May 22, 2026

Surprise: Jay Z Comes Out a Winner as Sprint Buys 33 Percent Interest in Tidal Streaming Service

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Jay Z must be some persuasive negotiator. Sprint–a phone service rarely mentioned by anyone– has become an investor in his Tidal streaming music service.

Well played, Jay Z.

The rumor is that Sprint has become a 33 percent investor in Tidal, a music service rarely mentioned by anyone. But in order to get in the music game, Sprint may have paid Jay Z and his investors $200 million.

Sprint will offer Tidal and its exclusives to its 45 million customers. If you have Sprint, you will get Tidal on your phone, per the official announcement.

Well, it’s not like Spotify and Verizon have hooked up. Tidal is much less listened to than Spotify, the main streamer of music. And Sprint is rarely the answer when you ask someone “What service do you have?” But the agreement does give Tidal a much needed bigger audience.

To date, artists who took new music to Tidal exclusively wound up losing out on being part of the mainstream. This should help. I don’t know what it does for Sprint but at least they’ll have good music.

keep refreshing for updates…

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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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