Last month, Spotify agreed to pay Joe Rogan the princely sum of up to $250 million to keep his hit podcast. Now, Bloomberg reports that Spotify is revealing audience numbers for the first time that demonstrate just how big of a hit it is. Rogan's podcast has 14.5 million followers on the platform, roughly three times as many as No. 2 "TED Talks Daily" (5 million). Others in the top five are "Call Her Daddy" (3.7 million), "Crime Junkie" (3.3 million), and "Stuff You Should Know" (3.2 million). See a more complete list.
"So, yes, Rogan is huge," writes Bloomberg's Ashley Carman, who drew the stats from a new feature Spotify has been quietly rolling out. It's not fully in use yet, meaning that numbers from shows such as "Smartless" are not yet included. Carman notes that Rogan's Spotify numbers are not quite as big as his numbers on YouTube (16.4 million), but "it's worth noting that Rogan accumulated these Spotify followers over just four years—his show wasn't on the platform until he signed an exclusive deal in 2020."
Spotify allows Rogan's show to be distributed elsewhere, and the deal also includes revenue sharing, which the Wall Street Journal described as "emblematic of shifting economics in podcasting," when it first reported on the agreement. (Rogan has come under fire for, among other things, his questioning of COVID vaccines.)
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