Under the new pact, Rogan’s podcast will no longer be exclusive to the platform
Joe Rogan signed a new multiyear partnership deal for his podcast, the Joe Rogan Experience, which is reportedly worth up to $250 million, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Under the agreement, his controversial show — which was exclusive to Spotify for the past three years — will now be available on other services including Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and YouTube. According to WSJ, the new pact includes an upfront minimum guarantee and a revenue-sharing agreement based on ad sales; the media service will handle the sale and distribution of ads for the podcast in favor of broader distribution. Shares of the audio streaming giant rose about 2 percent on Friday.
Rogan’s show has released more than 2,200 episodes to date, according to Spotify, and in a blog post on the platform, he called the conversations on his show a “a kind of mental nourishment.” Spotify first brought Rogan to its platform in 2020 in a deal that was reportedly worth more than $100 million and made his podcast a Spotify exclusive.
He has garnered backlash in recent years and has been accused of peddling Covid-19 misinformation and conspiracy theories. In 2022, several musicians including Neil Young and Joni Mitchell called for a boycott of Spotify over the podcaster’s anti-vax comments and pulled their music from the platform.
That same year, Spotify wiped several archival episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience, after reports that Rogan had been recorded on the show using racial slurs multiple times in many different contexts. Spotify has remained steady in its support for Rogan throughout the controversies, and his most popular episodes continue to bring in millions of listeners.