Jay Z sells 1/3 of Tidal to Sprint for $200 million

Sprint says it has bought a third of Tidal; Billboard says the carrier is paying $200 million for its stake, which pegs Tidal’s value at $600 million.

Sprint and the music service aren’t offering any other details, except that Sprint customers will get “exclusive artist content not available anywhere else” and that Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure will join Tidal’s board.

Tidal’s and Sprint’s relationship dates back to the March 2015 U.S. launch of the company, when a report from the New York Post indicated that Sprint had acquired a stake in the company. At the time, Sprint walked back any formal deal, only alluding to negotiations “to determine how to best to make the service available to its customers… We are working together in partnership for the vision of the common cause of reestablishing the value of music, it is NOT a financial investment or exclusive partnership.”

Those discussions seem to have resulted in yesterday’s announcement, which also comes days after Norwegian media outlet Dagens Næringsliv published a lengthy report claiming that Tidal had been inflating subscriber numbers, while rumors of an acquisition, possibly by Apple, have been growing for months. Jay Z bought Tidal from Swedish company Aspiro AB for $56 million in 2015.