I saw the same video [0]. It would seem unlikely that Joe wouldn't have the proper business and legal advice to make a deal like this and not come out it "ripped off". He's a successful stand up, been in sitcoms and general show-biz for decades.

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Sq9r87jnRo

Unrelated but I really struggle with this kind of double and triple negative wording.

It WOULD seem UNLIKELY that he WOULD NOT have the proper advice to make a deal like this AND NOT be ripped off.

“He probably has good advisors that made sure he wasn’t being ripped off.”

It honestly took me 5 minutes to figure out what you were saying. I feel like I uniquely struggle with this, like I have some kind of undiscovered form of dyslexia. Maybe it’s just late.

It's bad writing but I think it's unusual to have that much trouble parsing it.

Yeah, but he also always mentioned how he doesn't want to be controlled and regulated. He rants about youtube (for all right reasons).

And now he is putting himself into a spotify box.

Sure, he can most likely retain all of his freedoms (due to his seer size), but once spotify becomes youtube for podcasts, then he could be partially blamed for supporting the very mechanism he spend most of his podcast life criticizing.

Exactly. I’m pretty sure that people are significantly underestimating the value of his deal. It’s probably on the order of 3 or 4 times higher than the WSJ estimate.

Creating a subscription model for the top 5% wouldn't restrict free access. That's the big difference between the model proposed and Howard Stern's Sirius deal. Everyone else (95%) could still listen to the free (ad-funded) show, the same way they do today.

and that's just the money up front, there are certainly some performance bonus clauses in there as incentive, too.