Spotify CEO Daniel Ek didn’t gather a wage from the streaming platform throughout 2022 – however he did pull in a cool $181,085 “for house safety companies.”
The Stockholm-based platform disclosed Ek’s fortress-level safety invoice and different noteworthy particulars in its Type 20-F, which covers 2022 and was filed earlier in 2023. Regardless of ongoing conversations about Spotify administration’s inventory selloffs – higher-ups have moved hundreds of thousands of {dollars}’ value of shares on the week – these identical professionals’ core compensation packages are receiving comparatively little consideration.
Consequently, we examined the seldom-discussed wage specifics attributable to Spotify execs for 2022. As talked about, CEO Daniel Ek, who in accordance with the doc owned 31.13 million shares at yearend, didn’t gather a wage for his work with Spotify throughout 2022.
The 40-year-old did, nonetheless, safe a wholesome $181,000 or so (reflecting the Euro-USD change charge on the time, practically equivalent to the current charge) “for house safety companies,” the regulatory doc exhibits.
Whereas the textual content doesn’t pinpoint the allocation of the sizable sum, which comes out to virtually $500 per day, the Spotify-covered bills presumably embody the wages of around-the-clock safety guards.
In any occasion, outgoing CFO Paul Vogel billed his employer a relatively modest $838 for house safety final yr, per the useful resource. Nonetheless, the submitting signifies that the exec’s personal 2022 base wage was $600,000, with $6.19 million in awarded choices and a complete of 16,465 shares in his possession as of 2022’s conclusion.
One other overpaid Spotify higher-up, now-former chief content material and promoting enterprise officer Daybreak Ostroff, raked in an astonishing $1 million base wage for 2022, the corporate relayed.
A testomony greater than the rest to the platform’s ill-advised technique of tossing huge checks on the podcasting area and hoping for one of the best, Ostroff’s 2022 compensation additionally included $3.35 million in inventory (not possibility) awards and $122,900 for using a company condo, in accordance with the submitting. As soon as once more as of 2022’s finish, Ostroff held 32,633 SPOT shares total, per the supply.
Greater image, although we reported a lot of the figures some years again, it’s value reiterating that Spotify additionally shelled out a complete of €170 million for Invoice Simmons’ The Ringer, €195 million for podcast-technology firm Megaphone, €45 million for Podz (one other podcast-tech operation), €57 million for live-audio providing Betty Labs, and €83 million complete for Podsights and Chartable (as their names counsel, completely different podcast-tech companies but).
These sums don’t embody the reportedly substantial checks Spotify wrote to safe the since-combined Gimlet and Parcast or the undoubtedly great expenditures behind lackluster podcasts.
After all, Spotify’s hardly the one main firm that’s squandered appreciable capital and time on unwise purchases. However no less than as Ek describes it, the times of indiscriminate investments are within the rearview, with a brand new deal with effectivity and profitability taking heart stage transferring ahead.