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Tribune News Service
Tribune News Service
Business
Rachel DeSantis

Jay-Z's Tidal reportedly losing millions of dollars, could run out of cash within six months

Jay-Z's Tidal may be on the verge of sinking.

The music streaming service is reportedly losing money to the tune of tens of millions of dollars per year, and may not have enough dough to stick around for another six months, Norwegian newspaper Dagens N�ringsliv reports.

The outlet claims that since Hov purchased Tidal in 2015, it's lost around $60 million _ $44 million of which came in 2016 alone.

Still, Tidal reportedly claims it's on track to turn a profit in mid-2018.

A spokesperson for the company dismissed the report to the Daily News, and said Tidal has been battling bad press since the very beginning.

"We have experienced negative stories about Tidal since its inception and we have done nothing but grow the business each year," the spokesperson told The News in a statement.

The report comes nearly one year after Sprint purchased a 33 percent stake in the company for $200 million.

At the time, Jay-Z's business partner Juan Perez reportedly claimed Sprint's investment would give the company "working capital" for the next year to year-and-a-half, according to DN.

From highly publicized beef with Kanye West to legal drama, the streaming service has been plagued with controversy since Jay-Z bought it in 2015 for $56 million.

In 2016, the rapper sued Norwegian media company Schibsted for exaggerating its number of subscribers.

During negotiations, Schibsted claimed it had around 540,000 users, though the actual number appeared to be much lower.

A 2016 Dagens N�ringsliv report also claimed that Jay-Z was inflating user numbers _ Tidal said last year it had hit 3 million subscribers, but the newspaper claimed the number was closer to 1 million.

For comparison, Spotify has more than 60 million subscribers, and Apple Music has more than 30 million.

Spotify charges $9.99 a month for Premium, but users can also use the service for free.

Tidal, meanwhile, requires all users to pay, with subscriptions at $9.99 per month.

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