Before Jay Z’s music streaming service Tidal launched, naysayers and critics were busy insisting that his latest business endeavor would surely be a fail. As the hip hop mogul embarks on a quest to prove his doubters wrong, Sony could be leading the entrepreneur into an embarrassing predicament.
Despite that fact that Jay Z’s own wife, the current queen of pop herself, is a co-owner of Tidal, her music is at risk of being snatched off the service for good because Tidal hasn’t reached a deal with Sony, who owns the rights to streaming Beyoncé’s music.
If Tidal can’t dish out some hefty royalties, Sony is allegedly threatening to leave the service without any hits from one of its most famous co-owners.
Or, at least, that’s how Bloomberg tells it, but Sony CEO Doug Morris says it simply isn’t true.
“Jay Z is a friend and business associate for many years. I have always admired his business acumen, his entrepreneurship and his passion for music,” Morris said in a statement, according to TIME. “All of our content, including Beyoncé, is available through the Tidal service, and we have announced no plans to remove our catalog from Tidal. Like all of our other partners, we are rooting for Jay and Tidal to succeed.”
It would have certainly been a major hit for Tidal considering Beyoncé’s dedicated fan base is likely to start flocking to the service with the arrival of more Tidal-exclusive videos like the one she recently dropped with fellow Tidal co-owner Nicki Minaj for “Feeling 
Myself.”
The daunting rumors also suggested that Beyoncé’s music wasn’t the only collection of hits that Sony had on the Tidal chopping block.
Bloomberg reported that Sony Music could have potentially had all the tracks by Adele, A$AP Rocky, Mariah Carey, Chris Brown, Michael Jackson, One Direction, Outkast, Pharrell Williams, Snoop Dogg and Tinashe removed from Tidal as well.
But with the threats to snatch all these artists’ music off Tidal turning out to be nothing more than a frightening rumor, it’s no surprise the hip hop mogul accused mainstream media and other entertainment executives of running a smear campaign against Tidal earlier this year.
The hip hop mogul insisted that mainstream media outlets and executives were out to make sure Tidal was a flop and if Sony did decide to dangle their most popular artists as leverage for higher royalties, it could have potentially been the demise of the great music service that barely had a chance.
