[J]ay Z has ambitious plans for a new streaming music service, and the entertainment industry. Earlier, it was announced that the mogul was purchasing a Swedish company called Aspiro.
The rapper believes the acquisition will help wed audio, video, and editorial features into one seamless, streaming experience.
Jay Z paid a total of $56 million for the platform, and its current subscriber base.
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Mooreland Partners, the financial advisors for Aspiro, handled the bid for the company. The offer came through a business named Project Panther Bidco Ltd, which is controlled by S.Carter Enterprises.
“While the offer is in its early days, once completed it will likely lift Aspiro and its advanced music streaming service to a new level. This is another landmark transaction in the digital media space advised by Mooreland,” said Peter Globokar, Managing Director, Mooreland Partners.
The corporation was publicly traded, but Jay Z has privatized the company outside of the stock exchange.
The inner workings of the deal are as follows.
Negotiations for the company began on December 3, 2014. Jay Z offered the company $56 million in cash or a total of $1.05 per share.
That was a 59% increase over Aspiro’s closing price of .066 the day the news broke. Board members recommended the sale. Aspiro’s biggest shareholder was a company called Streaming Media which owns 335,638,694 or 75.9% of the firm.
Streaming Media entered into an agreement with Project Panther and committed to selling their shares in the company.
[S]o what exactly is Project Panther?
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| Jay Z’s deal to purchase the company closed in mid-March. The acquisition gave Jay Z control of the new TIDAL music streaming app, which recently launched in the United States. |
Project Panther is already a multi-national corporation. It is incorporated in England and Wales, but its principal business offices are located at 1411 Broadway in Manhattan. The company was created to purchase Aspiro’s assets and is funded by Jay Z’s Shawn Carter Enterprises.
Project Panther plans to keep Aspiro’s current staff to manage the company, which includes CEO Andy Chen, CFO Christopher Hart, Chief Commercial Officer Peter Tonstad, and CTO Rune Lending.
Chen will receive about $360,000 while the rest of the senior staff will take home about the same amount all together. In total, Jay and Project Panther have earmarked almost $3.5 million to buy out the rest of employee’s stock.
Project Panther was formed to purchase the company that released the TIDAL app over the summer, which received modest reviews.
It comes with over 25 million songs and 75,000 videos, utilizing the Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) for both Android and Apple devices.
TIDAL is already available in the U.S., Canada, the UK, Ireland, Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg and has the licenses to launch in 42 more countries.
