As a rapper Jay Z had quickly made a name for himself, but with a net-worth estimated at $610M this year (by Forbes), which means he earned $110M this year alone, no one will argue Jay Z's business sense either. But just like many other things in life, running a business is not always a simple task. Jay Z has had a pretty challenging year. Most of the publicity has been about Roc Nation and Tidal, this year, so you would almost forget that Jay Z is in the sports business and still works in fashion, too.
In any business, they say, that all is fair and that down right street style Jay Z learned as a kid, is still showing in his business ways now. Roc Nation Sports was recently sued for stealing Melvin Ingam away from his agent.
His artist management company had to take some criticism from Rita Ora, earlier this year. The company had grown too big to give her the attention she needed for her career. Even though Rita Ora and Roc Nation parted ways, later, Roc Nation Latin grew extensively and the latest signees to Roc Nation are Gavin Rossdale (for publishing) and, according to rumors so far only, Lil Wayne. A range of upcoming stars from around the world have actually joined the roster, this year. Maybe Rita Ora had a good point. However it's not Roc Nation that is making waves. Within the music industry Jay Z's making friends and enemies, while making major changes to the music business (or so they say) with Tidal. If it wasn't for them, we would not have been introduced music exclusives designed to get us moving from one platform to the next, which we collectively did.... Once.
Tidal may have gotten the support of Prince with the release of his last albums on the platform, but now it turns out Tidal may have taken advantage of Prince's trust. Prince had pulled his music from any other streaming service before allowing Tidal to stream his last two albums. When he died, Tidal decided to make his full catalog available on their service and now Tidal, Jay Z and Roc Nation are getting sued for this. Prince's label never allowed for this to happen. The news about the lawsuit came out just weeks after the news that Apple Music backed out of negotiations to buy Tidal. Jay Z always spoke of having learned on the streets to have a solid exit plan. He's a true investor. Jump in, make it bigger, sell it. Simple. Without this exit strategy taking effect, he'll still have to face all the day to day struggles of owning this business. It's a hard knock life.
