"When you think purely about breaking into the market, if somebody with the brand name of Jay-Z and Beyonce don't manage to break the stranglehold of the well-established streaming platforms then who else can?”noted music industry analyst Martha Bennett at the consulting firm Forrester.

In evidence of the almost impossible margins in the global music and video streaming industry, rapper Jay-Z has decided to offload a controlling stake in his streaming service Tidal to none other than Twitter boss Jack Dorsey. Dorsey is making the purchase through his sideline business, the payments platform Square Inc. The deal, according to tech observers, could bring together the potential of Blockchain with media streaming, with huge implications for the entertainment industry. 

As  Avivah Litan of the consulting company Gartner quipped "You need the applications to drive the new economy .. no one's going to just go get a cryptocurrency wallet if there's nothing to buy!” 

Elsewhere, Elon Musk's hunt for the minerals to power his Tesla electric vehicle revolution have taken him to the tiny Pacific island of New Caledonia. Tesla badly needs nickel supplies for it's lithium batteries. While nickel mining is notoriously damaging environmentally, Musk has offered inducements to extraction firms who think they can come up with a greener, cleaner process.    

Oil prices are up and so are jobs in the U.S., while China has set an annual growth rate of 6 percent this year. A hint perhaps of more booming figures to come on the markets, as the world's biggest economies slowly emerge from lockdown. 

GameStop stock is up again in more wild share price swings that continue to baffle even the most seasoned players on Wall Street. Meanwhile a management shuffle at the top of the firm behind the amateur trading activism, the social platfom Reddit, hints at another potential mega-floation on the way.

And while Jay Z tried to take on the might of Spotify with mixed results, our graph shows it is still the Goliath that all newcomers in the streaming market have to beat. 

Read on for more on this and the rest of the day's business news in full.

Louise Greenwood,

Digital business correspondent 

P.S. Did someone forward this to you? Sign up here     

U.S. payments firm Square is to buy a majority stake in rapper Jay-Z's Tidal streaming service. Under the terms of the $297 million deal, Tidal's co-owners, who include music stars Beyoncé, Madonna and Rihanna, will become shareholders in the new enterprise. 

Square, which is run by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, was founded in 2009 to offer financial tools for small businesses. Analysts say the tie-up could help artists to explore options such as receiving digital payments direct from fans as well as bringing together financial instruments such as blockchain technology with the streaming and purchase of online media. 

Tidal, which Jay-Z bought in partnership with other artists such as Daft Punk for $56 million in 2015 to invest in the growing streaming market, offers higher-quality audio and video and pays better royalty rates to artists than market rivals.

In a statement, Dorsey said the tie-up "comes down to one simple idea: finding new ways for artists to support their work." Industry watchers also suggest the deal, which will nominate Jay-Z to its board of directors, could promote the popularization of digital files known as non-fungible tokens (NFT), which can help certify ownership of online media.

Meanwhile, EU regulators are reportedly considering antitrust charges against Apple for the first time. It dates from complaints made two years ago by the music streaming site Spotify over subscription fees paid to the Silicon Valley giant. Spotify claims Apple has an unfair advantage in charging a 30 percent take from subscription fees for featuring the service in its App Store, while undercutting rivals on its own Apple Music platform. Earlier this week, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority opened an investigation into Apple's in-app purchase fees, while U.S. regulators are also scrutinizing the issue.

Electric car giant Tesla is to partner with a nickel mine in the Pacific island of New Caledonia to boost supplies for its batteries. Tesla boss Elon Musk tweeted last month: "Nickel is our biggest concern for scaling lithium-ion cell production." France-controlled New Caledonia off the northeast coast of Australia is the world's fourth largest nickel producer, a commodity that has soared in price by 26 percent over the past year. The Goro mine, in the south of the island, is considered to have potential to be one of the world's biggest producers.

A recent attempted sale of the mine by its Brazilian owner Vale to the Swiss commodities trader Trafigura sparked the collapse of the island's government last month and a general strike by workers. A new management structure agreed this week that an employee-based consortium will keep majority ownership. 

Last year, Musk said Tesla would offer rewards to producers who can mine nickel more sustainably – stating after an earnings announcement that: "Tesla will give you a giant contract for a long period of time if you mine nickel efficiently and in an environmentally sensitive way."

Elsewhere, the world's second biggest car maker Volkswagen is to accelerate its electrification plans, with bosses saying more than 70 percent of new vehicles will be fully electric by 2030. The figure is double the German auto giant's previous pledge that 35 percent would be fully electric by the end of the decade.

Reddit, the social media platform at the heart of the recent amatuer stock trading frenzy, has appointed a new chief financial officer ahead of a possible flotation. Drew Vollero was formerly CFO at Snapchat parent, Snap Inc. Reddit also reported on Friday a 90 percent increase in advertising revenue during the fourth quarter, with active daily users rising to more than 52 million.

U.S. employment increased at a faster rate than expected in February, as COVID-19 cases ease and vaccination rates quicken. The non-farm payroll data show 379,000 jobs were created last month, after also rising by a more modest 166,000 in January. The figures, which take the jobless rate down to 6.2 percent, have been welcomed by economists after the surprise fall in December, the first dip in eight months, rocked markets.

Oil prices jumped, hitting their highest levels in nearly 14 months. It comes as members of the cartel of producing nations, OPEC, and its allies agreed not to increase supply until next month, as they await evidence of a more substantial recovery in the world economy. Brent crude futures rose to $68 a barrel in early trading on Friday, a level not seen since January of last year, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate was up 1.5 percent to $64.76 per barrel.

Shares in the troubled U.S. retailer GameStop have jumped again, up by more than a fifth late on Thursday, in their highest daily surge since a "short squeeze" pushed up prices last month. The stock, which has been at the center of the stand-off between Wall Street and amateur day traders that has wiped billions off funds, finally closed up 6.4 per cent at $131.93. 

Investment banking income globally rose by more than a quarter last year, according to new figures. Revenues at the 12 largest investment banks were up $194 billion, according to the latest survey from research firm Coalition Greenwich – the highest annual total since the figures were first collated around a decade ago. Fees from special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), which raised a record $82 billion last year along with traditional IPO flotation revenue, lifted earnings. 

The London Stock Exchange has similarly reported revenue growth in 2020 across all business lines, with sales up 3 percent to $2.9 billion. 

The troubled cruise liner operator Saga has reached a deal with lenders to defer the terms of debt agreements tied to the value of its fleet. Saga, which also supplies specialist insurance for the over-50s, says the agreement should allow it to survive the ongoing COVID-19 travel suspensions into the second half of the year while it assesses the impact COVID-19 has had on its ongoing operations.

U.S. clothing giant Gap has forecast a return to growth this year as its major markets come out of lockdown conditions, as rivals continue to suffer. Shares in the firm rose 4 percent in late trading on Thursday. The firm said trading remained flat in the fourth quarter to the end of January, with total net sales down 5 percent due to store closures and the impact of COVID-19, despite digital sales increasing 61 percent year-on-year.

China has set a target for annual economic growth above 6 percent for 2021 as it continues its economic recovery from the COVID- 19 pandemic. Last year, China abandoned a decades-old practice of setting an annual GDP growth target. The Chinese economy grew 2.3 percent in 2020, the lowest rate since 1976, but was still the only major economy to expand amid the fallout of the pandemic.

Top investment bank Morgan Stanley is expanding its program to recruit more professionals from black and minority ethnic (BME) backgrounds, regardless of their experience in financial services. The bank, which last year launched its Morgan Stanley Experienced Professional Program, is recruiting candidates for its equity sales and trading department that it says have "transferable skills that would be relevant and beneficial in our world."

READ MORE

EU-UK's latest dispute explained

Meet the owners of Italy's one-euro homes?

China's Two Sessions at a glance

WATCH: New X-ray technology can scan and read delicately folded letters more than 300 years old, without opening them. Scientists from the U.S., the UK and the Netherlands have developed the groundbreaking "microtomography" method, that it's hoped may help uncover historical secrets from mummified objects and skeletal remains. They started with a trunk of unopened letters from The Hague dating from 1697.

There's a clear link between obesity and high coronavirus death rates according to new research. The World Obesity Foundation says death rates are almost always 10 times higher in countries where at least half the population is overweight. CGTN Europe spoke to Olivia Cavalcanti the director of science and programs at the World Obesity Foundation, to explain more. 

In a way, it's not completely surprising to us because those with obesity are more vulnerable to respiratory illnesses. We have seen this with H1N1, with MERS and people with obesity are more vulnerable to influenza. 

What do you think governments about this link between coronavirus and obesity? 

We want governments to take a holistic approach and to adopt the rules framework, which is to recognize obesity as a disease, ensure obesity monitoring, obesity prevention, treatment for obesity and a systems-based approach. That means that because obesity is such a complex problem, we need the coordinated solution that tackles that in all fronts. Just telling people to eat less and move more is not enough. It won't cut it. 

Do we need greater measures like taxation on sugar in every country, for example. 

We need different actions. So from a policy perspective, yes, we have seen that taxation on sugar, sweetened beverages works. We've seen this in Mexico, in Chile, from an overall perspective, we also need better and more specialized health care. And we need for people to understand that, again, this is not the product of lack of self-discipline or willpower, this is a disease, meaning that whoever suffers from it will suffer for their whole lives.

And finally, Jay-Z has failed to make a profit on his Tidal music streaming service, but after a decade neither has Spotify. The figures show Spotify still continues to dominate the streaming market, but it is facing new competition.