There's another article here that goes into how Joe Rogan has lost audience since going exclusive - https://www.theverge.com/22632213/joe-rogan-experience-spotify-exclusive-audience-reach
As well as the numbers which don't lie - anecdotally I also feel that Joe Rogan as lost his place at the top to others like Lex Fridman who interviews similar guests in the very long-form format but his show is available everywhere so has continued to grow.
No mention in the article of Podcasting 2.0 of course!
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Agree. At the time it reminded me of what Howard Stern did with Sirius/XM radio in the 2000’s. Big payday but killed his influence and listenership.
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I effectively quit JRE after the exclusive switch, after several years of regular listening.
Just didn't feel like switching platforms, and took it as an opportunity to explore the other ones out there, and start my own.
I definitely think these exclusivity deals are a long-term detriment in exchange for a short-term paycheck. And not saying $100M wouldn't be sweet...but how much did he lose because of it?
Interesting stuff to think about.
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I know I stopped listening to several podcasts when they became Spotify exclusives.
I hate that so many “podcasts” like JRE are locked behind platforms like YouTube or Spotify. IMO if you can’t access them via rss with a podcast app they shouldn’t be allowed to call themselves podcasts.
Podcasts are freedom tech and being locked on a platform is antithetical to podcasting. Big money may be leaving podcasts but podcasting will continue to live on - especially now with Podcasting 2.0 and V4V.
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Some shows lost more than three-quarters of their audiences after being converted to Spotify exclusives.
Incredible.
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Curry has been talking about this for awhile now. Also I wrote about this last October.
The biggest problem with Spotify and Anchor is the fake listenership data, that gets shoveled as truth to advertisers. This is why I’m bullish on zaps it’s the only true measure of value for advertisers. It also provides a number in “dollars for now” that equates to how much your listenership will actually spend to these “sponsors” of the pod.
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