Jay-Z overcomes shareholders fears as Aspiro takeover is approved

Jay-Z’s company Project Panther Bidco has overcome the difficulties posed a few minority shareholders of streaming service company Aspiro who opposed the terms of the acquisition and was finalised on Friday.

The deal. worth around $56m, is significant because it marks the entry of another potential contender in the digital music space, especially in North America. 

Aspiro is well-known for its music streaming WiMP service, which is available in Germany, Denmark, Norway, Poland and Sweden. The company also launched Tidal - a high-quality music service - in the second half of 2014 in the United States as well as the UK and a handful of other territories but - at a $20 per month price point - the uptake has been relatively small with only 17,000 subscribers reported as of the end of January. 

Now it will be interesting to see if Jay-Z plans to bet big on Tidal with a view of making it a high-priced competitor to the likes of Spotify, or whether he simply thinks that he will be able to flip the company for a lot more than he bought it for if he plays his cards right over the next year or two. 

For now, there are a lot of question marks around the future of Aspiro under the new ownership, but it is likely Project Panther Bidco will reveal more in the coming months. 

(Andrea Leonelli)