Sources: the value of Spotify's deal with Joe Rogan, which covers three and a half years, was at least $200M, twice the $100M that reports suggested at the time

The deal that brought his podcast to Spotify is said to be worth over $200 million, more than was previously known.

New York Times 2022-02-18

Context & Ripple Effects

Spotify initially made The Joe Rogan Experience exclusive, removing full episodes from YouTube and placing the show inside its service. Related coverage framed that move as part of a shift toward a closed podcast ecosystem in which Spotify owned programming, distribution tools, and advertising.

The newly reported minimum price makes the scale of that bet clearer: Spotify was paying not simply for a show, but for audience concentration that related coverage said it could use to build podcast advertising leverage and negotiate with music labels.

First-order effects

Spotify’s podcast-content investment carries at least $200M of cost over three and a half years, raising the commercial bar for Rogan’s exclusivity to deliver subscriber, advertising, or strategic value.
Joe Rogan gains confirmation that Spotify priced his show as a premium platform asset rather than a conventional podcast licensing arrangement.

Second-order effects

Spotify has stronger incentive to convert Rogan’s concentrated audience into ad inventory and platform leverage, aligning with its reported record ad-supported revenue growth in the same period.
Other major podcast creators and rights holders gain a clearer benchmark for exclusive distribution negotiations, while Spotify must weigh similarly costly exclusives against its broader content strategy.

Third-order effects

The deal supports a podcast market split between open distribution and platform-controlled premium programming, with the largest shows used to differentiate listening services and advertising operations.
Spotify’s later multiyear renewal that returned Rogan to broader distribution suggests that platforms may increasingly trade strict exclusivity for wider reach while retaining commercial relationships with marquee creators.

The trend: Podcast platforms are moving from buying exclusivity alone toward using marquee creator deals to control—or selectively extend—their audience, advertising, and distribution leverage.

Discussion

@theoscargoff Oscar Goff on x
To equal this, a musician would need 66,666,666,667 streams. https://twitter.com/...
@bascule @bascule on x
Spotify is supposed to be a music platform, but it pays musicians practically nothing. Meanwhile king turd is getting $200m https://twitter.com/...
@maxkennerly Max Kennerly on x
People who aren't business-savvy are saying things like “that seems imprudent” and “wut.” Well joke's on you, fools, it was a sophisticated, value-creating deal: if you had invested $1,000 in Spotify shares when they announced the Rogan deal, today it'd be worth $909.67. https://…
@bowl_of_worcel Brian Rosenworcel on x
I feel compelled to confess that Spotify pays my band .0002 cents per stream not .0001 https://twitter.com/...
@itsdaveedwards @itsdaveedwards on x
To add some perspective here: Last data released (2020) had Spotify paying $5B to the music industry in total. 200M / 3yrs = $66M/yr or 1.3% of all money paid to music biz for JRE. Think this will also raise some questions about that $100M fund the company established... https://…
@davewiner @davewiner on x
What if Apple was said Mac OS was open source? that's what it's like when Spotify says Rogan is a podcast. It's a huge insult.
@helenzaltzman @helenzaltzman on x
Spotify has been spending billions to knock podcasting off its axis. There's no vision beyond that; no ‘better’, just ‘more’ https://twitter.com/...
@mattlech Matt Lech on x
In other words, The Most Independent Man In Media History https://twitter.com/...
@edmundlee Edmund Lee on x
Whether it's “free speech” or we're-a-platform-not-a publisher, @eldsjal's rationale for keeping @joerogan on @Spotify could also (perhaps better) be summed up by the fact that the company paid $200 million for exclusive rights ... not $100 million. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@ericboehlert Eric Boehlert on x
turns out Spotify's paying him $200M no wonder they refused to hold him accountable to Spotify content guidelines that every other Spotify host has to adhere to; https://www.nytimes.com/...
@nash076 @nash076 on x
Spotify paid almost a quarter of a billion dollars for a white dude to say the n-word like have you been on Twitter there's a ton of them here that'll say it for free https://twitter.com/...
@ianmorris78 Ian Morris on x
If this is true, it is even more absurd than before. You could pay so many other podcasters enough money to actually CREATE something original for this kind of cash. Imagine pitching an idea and getting 50k to do 12 episodes of something amazing that matters to you. https://twitt…
@awilkinson Andrew Wilkinson on x
Ok, so... $200M Divided by 3.5 years = $57M/year Howard Stern makes $120M/year for an audience a fraction of the size. I've said it before and I'll say it again... Joe Rogan got ripped off*: https://www.supercast.com/... *Howard Stern got ripped off too https://twitter.com/...
@reckless Nilay Patel on x
Yes it is easy for anyone to start a podcast. Yes other podcast networks exist. Yes there are many other podcast players. But the *money at scale* (serving, tracking, analysis) almost always requires Spotify's tools, and neither Apple nor Google has any answer to that
@joefulgham Joe Fulgham on x
Your regular reminder that @spotify can afford to pay Joe Rogan this much because they don't pay other podcasters on their platform anything. They charge for access or drop ads inside your podcast and give you NOTHING so Rogan can get millions. https://twitter.com/...
@daviddtss David Dennis Jr on x
Aaaaaaamd twice the amount they offered for ALL diversity efforts lol https://twitter.com/...
@adheet_ya Aditya Hadi Pratama on x
For “that” amount of money, i think it's understandable why Spotify took their current stance https://twitter.com/...
@ben_mathewson Ben Mathewson on x
A song would have to receive over 57 Billion streams to payout this amount at their current average streaming rate ($0.0035/stream) https://twitter.com/...
@compliancememe Matt Kelly on x
Hard-pressed to see how that's not material to Spotify shareholders; $200M is 1.8 pct of total revenue. https://twitter.com/...
@eoinhiggins_ @eoinhiggins_ on x
But he's not corporate media, just trust me on this https://twitter.com/...
@teroterotero Tero Kuittinen on x
These Swedes paid a fifth of a bee to poison the minds of non college educated Americans. Asymmetric warfare. https://twitter.com/...
@sarthakgh @sarthakgh on x
That sound you hear is millions of tweets, pod episodes, thinkpieces being crafted to churn out takes on this in a yet another new cycle that most people outside of this app don't care about https://twitter.com/...
@edbott Ed Bott on x
Paying a podcaster like he's a Super Bowl winning quarterback is just financial malpractice. https://twitter.com/...
@ericnewcomer Eric Newcomer on x
really well done story on Spotify from the @nytimes https://www.nytimes.com/...
@caseynewton Casey Newton on x
Last week Spotify promised to spend $100 million on work by creators from historically marginalized groups. Would it have been $200 million if we knew this at the time?
@kimberlynfoster Kimberly Nicole Foster on x
Wait a minute. All this time people have been saying Rogan got $100M and it's two times that. Good grief. https://twitter.com/...
@frankluntz Frank Luntz on x
We are now on Week 3 of the Joe Rogan-Spotify news cycle. https://twitter.com/...
@jljacobson @jljacobson on x
Two hundred million. That's $2 million for every episode they had to pull for overt racial slurs. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@joshuaogundu Josh on x
Big money Joe https://twitter.com/...
@rschooley @rschooley on x
Can I cancel it again? https://twitter.com/...
@hayesbrown Hayes Brown on x
something i've never been clear on: what exactly did that money buy? was it literally all just a personal check to Joe Rogan for licensing his show? did it go to a production company and he got a cut? was it for the catalog AND to pay for producing new shows? https://twitter.com/…
@ceciliakang Cecilia Kang on x
Although reported then to be $100 million, the true value of the deal was at least $200 million, with the possibility of more via @katierosman @sisario @MikeIsaac @satariano Spotify Bet Big on Joe Rogan. It Got More Than It Counted On. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@mikeisaac @mikeisaac on x
here is a story on Spotify, led by @katierosman, @sisario, @satariano and me the rogan deal cemented the company's podcasting ambitions. it also came at a cost: upwards of $200 million and a whole lot of drama. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@sisario Ben Sisario on x
Spotify's deal for Joe Rogan was for $200m +, twice earlier reports. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@marklgoldberg Mark Leon Goldberg on x
A jaw dropping figure. Meanwhile, I like to think my humble show actually serves the public interest. https://twitter.com/...
@reckless Nilay Patel on x
It is truly amazing how no one read the linked story here! Spotify owns almost the entire tech and monetization stack for podcasts, and wants to buy more of it. That's the monopoly - eventually, almost all podcast monetization will flow through their tech. It's close already! htt…

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