Jay Z’s Tidal Hires Third CEO Since March

Hip-hop mogul’s struggling music streaming service taps former SoundCloud and Muve Music exec Jeff Toig

jay z tidal
Getty Images/Tidal

Just eight months after it was launched by music mogul Jay Z, Tidal has hired its third chief executive officer.

Jeff Toig, former chief business officer at SoundCloud and Muve Music executive, will be joining as CEO beginning on Jan. 4, 2016, the music service announced on Tuesday night.

Previously, Toig was a founder and SVP at Muve Music, Cricket Wireless’ music service, and was on the Virgin Mobile USA founding team.

His hiring comes at the end of a tumultuous year for Tidal, which included the departure of two CEOs.

Jay Z acquired Swedish streaming company Aspiro in January for $56 million. The hip-hop mogul relaunched Tidal at a star-studded gathering on March 30, with some of the biggest names in music including Beyoncé, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj and Madonna all joining as investors.

In November, news broke that chief investment officer Vania Schlogel, who had been the public face of the company since the relaunch, resigned months earlier in the summer.

Charging between $9.99-$19.99, Tidal provides members with access to more than 40 million music tracks, 90,000 videos, carefully curated playlists by industry experts and music journalists.

While some have scoffed at the price of the service, Tidal offers users exclusive content including a star-studded charity concert in October. The buzzed-about Brooklyn event featured performances by Beyoncé, Jay Z, Nick Jonas, Nicki Minaj, Usher, Lil Wayne, T.I., Indochine, Fabolous and Rick Ross, and streamed live on Tidal.

Anita Bennett contributed to this report.

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