Spotify Poaches Former Apple Music Hip-Hop Programming Head

According to a new report from Variety, Spotify has recently poached Carl Chery, Apple Music’s Head of Artist Curation for hip-hop and R&B programming.

At Apple, Chery was best known for securing Apple Music exclusives from Chance the Rapper, including the Grammy-winning album Coloring Book. He is also responsible for publicizing artists such as Cardi B, Bryson Tiller, Post Malone, Khalid, Daniel Caesar, 6LACK and H.E.R.

Chery originally joined Apple after the company acquired Beats by Dre / Beats Music several years ago. Lately, Apple has been shuffling its team quite a bit lately, recently moving Oliver Schusser as the head of Apple Music worldwide.

Currently, Apple Music has a total of 40 million paid subscribers, while Spotify’s latest data shows that their streaming service has approximately 70 million subscribers.