Jay Z bought the service in March 2015 for about $56 million, sharing ownership with other artists and promising high fidelity audio. Last year, rumors suggested Apple was trying to poach artists from the Tidal camp, and that was before we saw the word exclusive tagged to releases by Rihanna, Kanye, Prince and more. It recently reported topping three million subscribers, up from a million just last fall, and is apparently up to 4.2 million now.

Despite those growing numbers, it would be hard to stay in the fight against massive companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft, and it still trails Spotify by a huge margin. An acquisition seems like a logical exit, although we can only imagine what the company would look like as a part of Apple. Beats has been an integral -- if not widely used - part of its music offering so far, and I'm wondering how Tidal's artist-first stance fits there.