From being Lady Gaga’s manager and an investor in startups to Spotify’s boss of creator services, Troy Carter has been a prominent figure in the music industry’s digital evolution in recent years. Now he’s returning with a new company called Q&A, co-founded with J. Erving and Suzy Ryoo (who previously worked with Carter at investment firm Atom Factory) and Stem co-founder Tim Luckow.
Variety reported that Q&A is merging with Erving’s distributor and label-services company Human Re Sources – you may remember it as one of the first recipients of direct-artist-advances from Spotify last year. The goal: to “build an integrated solution for artists via distribution, management, label services, and data analytics with a highly collaborative artist-driven approach”. It sounds a bit like Platoon, the company that helped Billie Eilish (among other artists) get her first break, and which was recently acquired by Apple.
“My time spent at Spotify allowed me the opportunity to see gaps that still exists between the music business and technology,” said Carter. “Modern artists have to be more entrepreneurial than ever before. They’re looking for a lot more than music distribution, they want experienced teams that can help build long-lasting careers…”
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