Thinking About Spotify, Exclusivity, Call Her Daddy, and Joe Rogan
Hey, everybody. And welcome to Podcast Workflows, the show that provides insights into how to improve your podcast systems and workflows, allowing you to create and grow a high-quality podcast by showing you how to best spend your limited time. My name is Joe Casabona. I'm your host. And today, I want to tell you what I've been thinking about when it comes to Spotify’s exclusivity, Call Her Daddy, and Joe Rogan.
Now, this article is up on the site over at [podcastworkflows.com]. I will link to it in the description for this show. But over the last few weeks, Spotify has made a couple of big announcements. First, their 2nd biggest show, Call Her Daddy, ended exclusivity rights. And while the show will still be a Spotify show, it will be or it is, I guess, currently widely distributed. When I wrote this piece, it was already number one in Apple's comedy charts and number two overall. This was about a week ago that I wrote this piece as I'm recording. But the bigger news, I guess, the news that eclipsed the Call Her Daddy news was that the following weekend, it was announced that Joe Rogan, the Joe Rogan Experience, would also no longer be exclusive to the Spotify platform. And so now that is widely distributed across all major podcasting apps. And it took about three days for it to become number one on Apple's charts, Apple Podcast Charts.
In the Pod News newsletter this morning, it held all of the top charts for Spotify and Apple as it is based on countries of the United States, Australia, and then Canada as well. So the renewal was also apparently a pretty massive deal monetarily. There were reports of it being $250,000,000, though Spotify said that wasn't the case. it's got me thinking about podcasting and about what's in store for us.
At the end of 2023, I wrote a piece called The Ghost of Podcast Future where I essentially made my predictions for 2024, and the main predictions were the downloads would matter less, and podcast ads as we know them would take a hit. I have a new piece up on the site over at, again, [podcastworkflows.com] about how CPM isn't the only way. There'll be an episode about that coming out soon. We'll see some podcast listening app consolidation, and podcasters will have to get more creative with their content. I didn't touch AI because I didn't feel prepared, but this new news has me thinking even more about what 2024 is doing for podcasting.
And one of the biggest areas where I think this will change is or one of the biggest ideas maybe is that exclusivity is a risk even for giant podcasts. And so here's what Ariel Shapiro said in her Hot Pod newsletter by The Verge, strongly recommend it, before the Rogan deal was announced. She said if Rogan goes, it would really be the final death knell for Spotify's exclusivity experiment. It did work for Spotify in some ways by snatching up the top podcasting and studios at the time, it lured podcast listeners away from Apple and forged new ones. And even now that it has fallen behind YouTube, it is still a go-to destination for podcasting.
I, of course, agree with this analysis. This is that was the end of the quote. I, of course, agree with this analysis. When Spotify started doing exclusive deals, I, more or less boycotted the shows. Though maybe boycott is a strong word. I personally feel podcasting is one of the few truly open mediums left. And I feel that was especially the case in 2018 to 2020, which is 2020 is when the Joe Rogan deal got inked. Plus, I listen to all of my podcasting in a single app, Overcast, and I am reluctant to change or to listen to multiple shows in multiple places. I know, I'm probably not the most common type of podcast listener. I'm part of the super podcast listener fans or whatever. But this goes so far to even say that I adore ads in Wondery shows in Overcast even though I can get those ad-free in Amazon Music in the Amazon Music app as a Prime member. So I really don't want a just disjointed experience, and that was part of the reason why I didn't really like the exclusivity thing.
I don't listen to Joe Rogan, but I did listen to Primetown. And when they went exclusive to Spotify, I stopped listening to Crimetown. But it's no secret that these moves did bring people to the platform.
Spotify, one of the Top 3 podcast apps, was eating Apple's lunch for a while shortly after Joe Rogan became exclusive. So it did help, and I'm going to guess that the experiment was successful in that sense.
So why did this change? Well, there's something else that Shapiro points out in her newsletter. “But as Spotify fights for higher margins, it seems it has more to gain from getting ad dollars that come from wider distribution than whatever less tangible platform benefit comes from exclusivity.”
So, I mean, she says it right here. The main benefit of these shows being exclusive, bringing people to their platform does not outweigh the benefits of being everywhere and getting ad dollars, especially since Spotify owns Megaphone, one of the biggest dynamic ad platforms.
So what does this mean for small podcasters like us? The risk-reward of exclusivity is not worth it. If Spotify, one of the top 3 podcast apps, didn't feel it worked for Joe Rogan's audience or Call Her Daddy, then surely it won't work for most others. Not in the all episodes or exclusive sense anyway. Right? There is still the idea of some content being exclusive for members, not necessarily on a specific platform, though. Now, I'll point out here that exclusivity didn't work for YouTube either. We saw this same lesson play out with YouTube Red. They brought some of the biggest YouTubers, like Rhett & Link, in to create YouTube Red exclusive content, But they ended up scrapping that because it wasn't worth the investment, and now that content is available to all users.
When I first saw Tom Webster speak back in 2018, he discussed the importance of being where your listeners listen. I'm still really, really bullish on that. And it seems Spotify has learned the same lesson.
Joe Rogan's experience was huge on YouTube, and the clips still get millions of views. So, again, exclusivity, it feels time and time again, we're learning doesn't necessarily work. And I'll say that this is different than the TV exclusive model. Right? I mean, like, Law and Order is on NBC. Family Guy was on, Fox. But those were the premieres, and syndication is still a really big and important thing in television. And now with the streaming wars in full force, we are also seeing that some content makers have determined that having their own streaming platform is maybe not necessarily the best thing, that licensing it to a Netflix or audience Plus is better. So I think that Tom Webster is right, that you should be where your listeners listen.
And speaking of Tom Webster and Joe Rogan, I wanna also address this question of how is Joe Rogan so popular. The Spotify deal has reignited the discussions about why Joe Rogan is so popular. Tom Webster had easily, I think, the best analysis in what is in a now-deleted thread. He says, ”I want you to think about why Joe Rogan is popular. It's not because he's a celebrity. Feeding people bugs on a reality show isn't enough to make you good at podcasting. Rogan is popular because he is good at what we are supposed to be good at in podcasting, knowing your audience.” He goes on to say, “when I see Rogan's audience, I see a group of disenfranchised young, mostly men who do not feel completely in control of the narrative of their own lives and cannot shake the feeling that the system is rigged against them because older guys, like me, he says, continue to hang on to our jobs and aren't sharing in the American dream with them.”
Finally, Webster wrapped up by saying that growth exposes them to information they believe society keeps hidden so they can make their own decisions. They don't want conspiracy for the sake of conspiracy. They want a sense of agency in their own lives.
And if you caught this thread and read the comments, an activity I generally don't recommend, you'll see hate directed at Webster because the commenters didn't like what Webster said. They were very strong, how can you say anything good about this person I so deeply hate vibes.
But not liking Joe Rogan doesn't make Tom Webster wrong. And don't get me wrong. I don't like Joe Rogan either. I'm old school disliking Joe Rogan. I thought his whole shtick about calling out comedians who steal jokes was lame and gimmicky, but it is proof that at some point he was dedicated to the truth. And in my opinion, he's only gotten worse since then. Joe Rogan's resume before and during his podcast was mediocre stand-up comedian, host of Fear Factor, UFC announcer, and minor TV and movie roles. None of these things make you the top podcaster. In fact, the 2nd most popular podcast on Spotify at the time of this recording and writing is New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce. And it's probably only there because of Taylor Swift, though as I record this, Travis Kelce did just win a Super Bowl. And Taylor Swift is the most popular person in the world right now. But, again, what does this mean for us, the small podcasters?
Here's how Webster ended his thread. “This is the work. I've worked literally with some of the biggest shows in the world in radio and podcasting, and this is the work. Narrow focus on humans.” I mentioned that I have a problem with Rogan's popularity. It's not that his show is so popular. It's that show number 2 isn't even close. It's that there's such a wide gap between Rogan's show and the rest of the field. It's that he's such an outlier. All because he has found an audience that needs a home and he gave them a home. Then he ends, this is his final post in that thread, that now deleted thread. Please do the work. You don't need to sell out your values or push things that you probably know aren't true. Or you don't need to say things because that's what people want to hear. But you do need to find your audience. Don't focus on money or growth or anything else. Serve human beings and do everything possible to reach them wherever they consume content.
Thanks so much for listening. Like I said, you can head over to [podcastworkflows.com] to find the full-length article if you prefer to read it or wanna reference it later. And if you wanna get these episodes and my content delivered right to your inbox, you can head over to [podcastworkflows.com/join] to sign up for my free mailing list. That's, again, over at [podcastworkflows.com/join]. I'm also writing over on Substack, so you can head over there too.
Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, I can't wait to see what you make.
Hey, before you go, I want to tell you about a free resource I have called my Podcast Process Templates. They are a set of Notion documents that give you a full podcast planner, a show planner, and even some AI prompts to help you get the creative juices flowing. You obviously want to improve your podcast workflows and save time and these templates will give you a basis for all of your other processes. Through my Notion and Airtable templates, I am able to automate a number of things as well as stay organized so that I am using my podcasting time more efficiently.
If you wanna get your hands on these templates completely for free, you can head over to [podcastworkflows.com/templates]. That's [podcastworkflows.com/templates] to get your free podcasting process templates, today.
