Post-IPO life is good for the Spotify executive — including those that have jumped ship.
We’re not quite sure what prompted Troy Carter’s departure from Spotify, though his exit had been rumored for weeks. Less confusing is the bulge of cash Carter carried out of the building.
Spotify’s direct public offering generated roughly $30 billion in valuation, with stakeholders like Troy Carter shuttling to the top .0001% of earners overnight. As is often the case in Wall Street bonanzas, many of Spotify’s top executives quit shortly afterwards.
And most left the building with that dangerous combination of insane cash blended with ample free time.
Just this morning, word emerged of a pricey art purchase by Carter, apparently an avid collector.
Multiple sources have pointed to a $730,000 winning bid for an oversized canvas by Rashid Johnson, with the New York Post pinning Carter as the buyer.
You can see more details on the oversized canvas here. Note that this 2018 painting is marked, ‘Bidding Closed’.
The purchase happened at the Aspen Art Museum’s ‘ArtCrush’ event. According to the Post’s Page Six, Carter dropped three-times the opening bid for the painting, titled ‘Untitled Escape Collage’.
Carter apparently beat Dallas socialite Nancy Rogers for the prize.
Art and culture magazine Cool Hunting pointed to the bid as the evening’s crowning event. “Johnson’s art would sell for $730K after a heated bidding war — and in doing so, guaranteed that the museum raised everything it needed during the night,” Cool Hunting’s David Graver noted.
The auction wasn’t exactly a soup line. Graver notes that “500+ people took to Buttermilk Mountain—many in Audi vehicles—to sip Dom Pérignon and honor Aspen Award for Art winner Rashid Johnson — whose work would provide the night’s most momentous happening.”
Back at Spotify HQ, we’re wondering if Carter’s absence is being felt.
Carter, who formerly managed Lady Gaga, was credited as being a critical link to the hip-hop community. That connection helped to squash a disastrous ‘Hate Conduct Policy,’ which stirred serious protest from high-profile rappers. Carter is credited with intervening and fixing the mess.
Recent data shows that streaming’s surge is heavily powered by hip-hop and r&b, with Nielsen counting 1 out of every 3 streams coming from the combined genres.
But more challenges are ahead on the ‘Hateful’ front. Just recently, Spotify found itself in the middle of another ‘Hate Conduct’ storm. This time, the platform was blasted for ingesting Alex Jones’ InfoWars podcast, with subscribers ditching the service in protest.
Eventually, Spotify deleted four episodes while leaving 613 behind, only to erase all of them a day later.
Whether Carter would have helped to prevent that mess is unclear, though it was ultimately Apple that took the leadership role on the InfoWars front. Just moments after Apple nixed InfoWars from iTunes, the show was quickly wiped from YouTube, Spotify, and other platforms.
This is the most read story? Really? High ranking music exec buys a painting that costs more than 95% of the artist make in a year. New headline