Are “it was a stupid decision to buy him” and “I don't get why people listen to him” supposed to be related statements? The business decision isn’t about your personal feelings, it’s about his objectively measurably enormous audience

I want to see how they got the 200 million back and as they have to lay off 17% of there people it looks like a stupid decision in the end.

It's a ridiculous amount of money for that content.

But looking back at those days where all platform embraced a strategy to "own ALL content", I doubt that the 2nd-best offer was significantly less.

After all, they also paid him to NOT make any further money with the podcast on YouTube or other platforms...

> But looking back at those days where all platform embraced a strategy to "own ALL content",

I don’t understand how that could have ever been a strategy without buying the businesses that own most of the popular music, such as Warner, Universal, and Sony.

Spotify is largely owned by those businesses, that was part of the deal to get them to even open their catalog

That is not true.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SPOT/holders/

Any ownership by the record labels must be less than 1%.

Would you say that about any other type of media/culture/art you dislike?

"I don't get why people like the Mona Lisa, the painting is neither original nor particularly well done"

Is just as much a subjective statement. JRE is, by most released figures the top interview podcast on the planet, his interviews regularly move Charts of third party media like Book Bestseller Lists and Music Charts.

There obviously is a huge audience and value there and I can only assume their agreement over 200M was based on some pretty solid math.

> I can only assume their agreement over 200M was based on some pretty solid math.

Working at Microsoft during the Ballmer era and seeing the number of multi-billion-dollar acquisitions written-down to nothing, I would never assume corporations spend large amounts wisely.

You certainly have a point there, but I also remember being absolutely wrong about the Minecraft aquisition which has now paid for itself multiple times.

Your math doesn't have to work out, even if it's solid.

Sometimes it's the case that you do 10 investments, each $1b where one makes you $100b. But in hindsight the 9 looked stupid, but at the time you were using the same strategy to do all the 10 investments.

Not sure if it's case with Joe Rogan, but just how sometimes there's a lot of failure, while the strategy itself is solid.

I will never understand why that idiot was hired as a CEO in the first place.

I think, sometimes, buying the competition and killing it is the intended effect. Especially if you're as anti-competitive as Microsoft.

> "I don't get why people like the Mona Lisa, the painting is neither original nor particularly well done"

And it's so small, too.

The Mona Lisa is art, and it is a "you can like it or not" situation. A podcast that allows for spreading misinformation about vaccines can be responsible for the deaths of many

He’s a great podcaster.

Good enough to bring in $200M of revenue through subscriptions or ads?

Unless Spotify releases numbers none of us have a clue. Considering his youtube numbers before the move, that number was actually him selling himself short.

By definition he is since that is what spotify paid now.

that wasnt the purpose of buying him. the purpose was to buy a gigantic audience of listeners that would hopefully now use spotify as their main podcast app

yes that's his valuation since that's what Spotify paid.

He's really gone downhill lately. Looking really rough. And stoned on top of that. I wonder if he can even comprehend half of what his guests are saying.

Na he is still great

You don’t listen to Joe Rogan to listen to Joe Rogan. You listen because he has the most interesting guests on.

And lets people spread fake news and stupid theories.

Just because they are "interesting" they should not get a free promo.

That's precisely what people like about it. Anyone can come on his show. No matter how batshit crazy. Many people don't want to be coddled and protected from viewpoints other people have decided are fake news or stupid. They can make up the balance themselves.

That's your opinion. Most guests have a wealth of knowledge that shouldn't be discounted outright.

“But but misinfo!” Man I hate where we’re at for free speech in the West.

Who defines what's "Fake"? Who defines what's stupid?

I love it when people parrot what they heard - what misinformation? Do you mean the Robert Kennedy stuff? I can have my own strong views that the vaccines were useful and still enjoy content - if you just consume what you hear and relay it of course you shouldn't be around "fake news and stupid theories". Saying that 99% of Rogans podcasts are not like this.

Joe Rogan isn't an insightful, active listener like Charlie Rose was and with actual interesting guests at a higher signal level.

It's simple, different people have different opinions in life and his show is still the most popular podcast on spotify. was it worth $200 million, I have my doubts on that one.

I feel neither positively nor negatively about Rogan himself (I've never listened to him) but it was plainly a very stupid investment on Spotify's part. Anyone could have predicted (and most of us did) that only a fraction of his audience would follow him behind the paywall and removing him from mainstream free outlets would instantly diminish his cultural relevance.

paywall? all you have to do is sign up for the freemium version of spotify?

‘Diminishing his cultural relevance’ may have been the goal.

Reducing his audience, censoring his most controversial past episodes and preventing certain conversations from happening in front of his large audience in future?

Spotify paid $200 million… to tie a podcaster to their sinking-ship podcast platform (and this plan only works if they know and intend for their platform to sink)… just to get him from a big spotlight to a small spotlight?

It wasn't a "sinking-ship podcast platform", it was Spotify's strategy to own content and thus reduce cost for per-play licensing.

They went for the Netflix strategy for growth. We now know the podcast-idea didn't translate into as many paid subscribers as they expected, but with ~25% of all Spotify subscribers listening to podcasts [1] it's not a "sinking-ship podcast platform"

[1] https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/spotify-podcast-subscr...

FWIW, there is rationale for platform to own content vs licensing deal that forces platform's hand to 'make unavailable' items their customers already purchased[1].

Not that I disagree with you.

[1]https://www.playstation.com/en-us/legal/psvideocontent/?et_r...

In the last few months, several podcasts that were only available on Spotify, have become available via traditional podcast means. For example, Heavyweight. Others did so earlier, though for specific reasons (Science Vs had a spat with Rogan over "dis/misinformation", where I largely agree with them factually, but disagree with them on the use of those terms, etc.).

I think it's fair to say there's a reasonable indication that Spotify exclusivity has been a bad bet for a decent amount of their podcast portfolio. Maybe it works still for Rogan-sized podcasts, but even that's unknown.

I wouldn't be dismissive of a label of "sinking ship", even though it's stronger than how I would put it -- it's plausible enough.

The frame of reference is "was", so back in 2019 when Spotify negotiated with Joe Rogan

Ha, that's fair, I missed that. I wasn't optimistic about them in 2019, but sinking ship would definitely be a strong claim about that time, and my point is moot about that time.

Probably some motivated forgetfulness on my part, because I'm just so glad that their attempts to bind podcasts exclusively to their platform seem to be failing/diminishing.

it would have made more sense to create their own record label than to try to turn a free and open platform like podcasts into a closed platform like they tried with podcasts

That would be Spotify's Direct Distribution Contract, something they also established in 2018, shortly before (or in parallel with) their podcast acquisition strategy.

> It wasn't a "sinking-ship podcast platform”

I think you may have missed the context for this thread :) You’re talking about reality - I’m talking about the hypothesis that Spotify chained Joe Rogan to their platform because they wanted him to drown, which implies not only that the platform is sinking, but that it’s doing so deliberately.

Elon paid vastly more for Twitter, seemingly primarily as an act of activism.

In this incredibly divided world, politics has started to come before profit.

And when they paid an additional several hundred million buying up tens of random science and tech news and D&D podcasts - was that to intentionally kill those podcasts too? Or were they just a necessary sacrifice in order to create a more believable “we want our product to succeed” fascade, so that Joe didn’t realise he was getting tricked?

You don't watch Joe Rogan for Joe Rogan. You watch Joe Rogan for the guests. I love his episodes with Elon Musk.

>It was and still is a stupid decision to buy Joe Rogan.

>I don't get why people listen to him...

I think you just contradicted yourself here. Whether or not it was a stupid decision to buy the rights to his podcast is orthogonal to whether or not he's funny or smart or if his content gives "value" to listeners.

JR is another Howard Stern-Sirius troglodyte, but in alt-right wingnut flavor.

It’s light entertainment and he tends to cover topics I am interested in like BJJ/Muay Thai. If he goes on about Covid etc I just half listen, it’s rarely that long.

> I don't get why people listen to him...

People have different tastes. That's OK.

The Joe Rogan Experience has continued to be at the top of Spotify's podcast charts, bringing in 11m listeners an episode. https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/07/03/top-pod...