Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon won the coveted rights to create a DJ remix of a classic Whitney Houston track with the help of one of the bank’s well-connected clients — even as he enlisted Goldman employees to help him manage his deejaying schedule, according to a report.
Solomon — who moonlights as an amateur DJ even as he heads one of Wall Street’s preeminent banks — recently won the rights to deal allowing him to remix Whitney Houston’s 1980s-era hit song “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.”
The CEO’s relationship with a Goldman client, music executive Larry Mestel of Primary Wave, the publishing and talent management agency, helped him land the deal, according to The New York Times.
Solomon — who started his amateur DJ career as “DJ D Sol” in 2015 — founded a small record label, Payback Records, the same year he was named CEO at Goldman in 2018.
The Goldman boss reportedly enlisted the bank’s social media manager, Brandon Launerts, to help manage Solomon’s social media presence and to strategize with Payback employees who were looking for creative ways to promote new releases and DJ appearances by Solomon, the Times reported.
Goldman has denied any impropriety and Solomon says he donates all proceeds from his DJ side gig to charity.
“As we told the New York Times, there are no conflicts of interest,” a Goldman spokesperson told The Post.
“As we told The New York Times, Goldman Sachs employees have not managed David’s music activities and no staff resources are used for the platform,” the spokesperson added.
Mestel reportedly persuaded Pat Houston, the late singer’s sister-in-law and executor of her estate, to agree to the deal, which was approved by Sony Music Entertainment, according to the Times.
The Whitney Houston remix has been released on Spotify and other streaming platforms. Solomon’s Spotify page has so far amassed more than 600,000 listeners — which industry experts told the Times was an unusually large number for an amateur DJ.
Solomon’s remix of the Houston song has so far been streamed more than 2 million times on Spotify.
A much-anticipated Hollywood biopic about the late pop star, who accidentally drowned in a bath tub in a Beverly Hills hotel in February 2012, was released on streaming services on Tuesday.
Solomon’s remix deal has irked observers who say his status as chief executive of a large Wall Street investment firm gives him access to movers and shakers in the music industry that other professional DJs cannot tap into.
Guillermo Page, a music and entertainment professor at the University of Miami Frost School of Music, told the Times: “When you’re dealing with someone of the stature of Whitney Houston, it’s very likely that they have some restrictions as to who can use the sound recording.”
“Just because you want to do your own remix or you want to make your own creation doesn’t automatically mean you’re going to be approved,” Page said.
It has also raised questions as to whether Solomon, whose pay has been cut due to the bank’s declining performance of late, is sufficiently devoted to his duties at Goldman, which recently laid off some 3,200 workers and reported $3 billion in losses.
A spokesperson for the bank told the Times: “The reporting is trying to assert that there is overlap or intermingling of David’s music activities and his role as CEO of Goldman Sachs.”
“It’s clear that both David and Goldman Sachs have been scrupulous in keeping the relationship separate,” the spokesperson said.
Mestel told the Times in an email: “Our business is in part to get artists to cover, sample, and or remix our legendary song catalog.”
As noted by the Times, Mestel’s company, Primary Wave, became a Goldman client in 2018 — the same year Solomon succeeded Lloyd Blankfein as the bank’s CEO.
In 2019, Goldman published a list of its “100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs.” One of the businesspeople who made the list, which was considered a “pet project” of Solomon’s, was Mestel.
The bank denied that Solomon personally handpicked Mestel to make the list and insisted that there was “no economic component” to their relationship.
In August of last year, Solomon apologized to the bank’s board of directors for DJing a Hamptons party during the height of the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns.
In the summer of 2020, Solomon opened for the band The Chainsmokers at a charity benefit in the Hamptons.
Revelers who attended the bash flouted social distancing rules that required people to stay at least six feet apart in an effort to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus.
The party in Southampton ignited outrage and prompted then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to announce an investigation.
In 2021, Goldman employees were angered over a DJ appearance by Solomon just days after the bank announced a major COVID safety clampdown.
