Goldman Sachs Advised Spotify’s Direct Listing, In Part, Because They Have a DJ COO

Spotify has been big in the news this week with its Wall Street debut. One company in particular sought after the advisory services of Spotify, and was able to get it thanks to a little musical background. Goldman Sachs COO, David Solomon, has a side project other than working as the bank’s chief operating officer—being a professional EDM DJ.

In the last year, Solomon has become a well-publicized DJ, playing events as big as the EMA awards alongside Paul Oakenfold as DJ D-Sol. Solomon has always had a fascination with the modern music industry and picked up DJ’ing as a hobby:

“Five, seven years ago, I started really kind of taking note of club and EDM music, and what was happening with all the electronic music, and I said: ‘This is really interesting. Big business.’ And started looking at it, and I said: ‘You know, I like some of this music’. And started playing around with it, started reading about these DJs that really had these incredible platforms, and I said: ‘You know what? This looks interesting.’ And kind of stumbled into it as a hobby, and now I just do it for fun.”  Solomon says in an episode of Exchanges of Goldman Sachs podcast.

Dune Bar rocks….

A post shared by DSol (@djdsolmusic) on Jan 1, 2018 at 8:52am PST

With musical experience under his belt, Solomon presented this as a personal plea for Spotify’s business leading up to its IPO. And, it worked. Goldman Sachs helped advise Spotify prior to its opening onto the market.

Spotify’s debut day was a success closing out at $149.01 a share, a 13% increase from the reference price decided by the New York Stock exchange. This put the company’s value at a whopping $26.5 Billion.

As of Wednesday morning though, shares of Spotify reduced by 8.5% from the following day. The stock started off at $140, which was lower then yesterday’s close, but higher then its debut $132 reference point. According to a CNBC article, Spotify’s unusual launch could prose issues to Wall Street’s IPO system in the future.

What do you think of Spotify entering the stock market, and what do you think about its outrageous value? Let us know in the comments below or on social media!