Joe Rogan signs exclusive deal with Spotify

First… “here’s what else you need to know today…”

• 25% of Australians listen to podcasts every month, according to new data from Edison Research’s Infinite Dial. The country is roughly two years behind the US, which now stands on 37% monthly reach.

• The nominations for the British Podcast Awards have been revealed.

  
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• Omny Studio has expanded its consumption analytics on its podcast platform

• Comedy network Forever Dog have switched back to ART19. They had moved to Stitcher Premium last year.

Joe Rogan goes to Spotify

• In one of podcasting’s biggest deals, The Joe Rogan Experience, generally held to be the biggest podcast in the world, is to move to Spotify in a licensing deal. It will remain free, but will become an exclusive-to-Spotify show by the end of this year. The show is currently hosted on Libsyn.
  • The show will be free to Spotify users (both Premium and Free users).
  • It will be available in video on Spotify as well as audio. Spotify tested video (May 7) but were tight-lipped as to why.
  • His full show won’t be on YouTube any more, though he will post clips. Possibly not that coincidentally, YouTube is readying a full launch of YouTube Music, a Spotify competitor.
  • No terms were given but the Wall Street Journal claims the deal is worth more than $100m, “depending on performance metrics”. Yashar Ali, a contributor to New York Magazine, claims it’s $200m.
  • PMM will continue to represent the show for advertising.
  • “It’s just a licensing deal, so Spotify won’t have any creative control over the show”, Rogan is reported to have said on his Instagram.
  • His full library, going back 11 years, is to switch to Spotify from September 1; exclusivity comes later in 2020.

Reaction

• Rogan made the announcement on YouTube. When going to press, the video had 20,000 likes and 18,000 dislikes; comments are almost all negative. Most comments to his announcement on Twitter are also criticising the deal.
• Spotify’s share price jumped 7.7% on the news.
• “Fuck Spotify, and fuck any ”podcast" that’s only playable in one app", tweeted Overcast’s Marco Arment, adding that “moving an existing, open, free show behind a proprietary wall results in massive audience loss. I hope he at least leaves his public feed up so he can return to it when his Spotify exclusivity fails.”
• Spotify’s new strategy is to kill podcasts (Simon Cohen, Digital Trends)
• “Rogan will decrease his overall audience and anger many touting him an advocate for the 'intellectual dark web’; Spotify’s listener base will drastically increase as Rogan arguably has the largest and most loyal fanbase” (Kevin Goldberg, DiscoverPods)
• “Rogan is one of the most popular YouTube podcasters, often with millions of people watching each episode, so losing his voice on the platform is a major hit to YouTube” (Ashley Carman, The Verge)

The Joe Rogan deal in numbers

• Spotify: 286m monthly users (Q1 2020) // Joe Rogan: 190m monthly downloads (Apr 2019)
• YouTube, where Rogan’s show was also available, has 2 billion monthly users (May 2019)
• In last year’s Canadian Podcast Listener study, Joe Rogan was listened-to by 10% of monthly podcast listeners: more than three times more popular than the #2 podcast. (thanks: Signal Hill Insights)
• Listeners to Howard Stern, who did a similar deal with SiriusXM: fewer than 1,000,000. Estimated listeners to each podcast from Joe Rogan: 11,000,000. (Andrew Wilkinson, TinyCapital)

A “walled garden”? A “monopoly”?

• Apple Podcasts, and the apps that use its directory, is responsible for about 70% of all podcast plays. Spotify, according to the latest data from Libsyn, has 9.1%.
• Apple Podcasts is only available on purchase of a specific $300+ device (a phone, tablet or laptop) available from one manufacturer. Spotify is available on thousands of different devices from hundreds of manufacturers, and to listen to the show won’t require any money.

Our naming policy

• A “podcast” is something that is delivered via an RSS feed to multiple podcast apps. Podnews refer to things available exclusively on Spotify, BBC Sounds or Luminary as “shows”. Accordingly, from late 2020, we’ll no longer refer to The Joe Rogan Experience as a podcast.