Sprint buys one-third of Jay-Z’s music streaming service

The nation’s fourthlargest cellphone carrier is buying up a third of Jay-Z’s online music platform, Tidal.

Sprint’s announcement Monday promises customers “exclusive content” from Tidal that they won’t be able to get on other wireless carriers, but it isn’t yet clear what form that content will take.

The $9.99-a-month music service, which was purchased by Jay-Z in 2015 for $56 million, seeks to compete with the likes of Spotify and iTunes for dominance over a growing market for streaming media. It offers high-definition music videos and, for an extra fee, high-definition sound quality.

The partnership gives Sprint greater access to media at a time when many other companies in its position are doing the same.

“This seems to be the direction the wireless industry is heading in,” said Jeff Kagan, an independent telecom analyst. “Combining different industries to increase value to both.”

AT&T, Verizon and other network operators have sought to buy up vast troves of content in an effort to persuade consumers to switch to their platforms. They also hope to sell advertising against that media, and to use the behavioral data generated by that consumption for marketing purposes, as well.

But whereas its larger rivals have tried to swallow entire media companies outright — AOL in the case of Verizon and Time Warner in the case of AT&T — Sprint is merely going for a slice of Tidal.

The wireless provider has been struggling to turn itself around. Falling subscriber numbers have pushed it to last-place among the major U.S. cellphone carriers. It has been beset by layoffs, and analysts say its network is in need of substantial improvement.