The Joe Rogan Experience continues to be the flagship podcast for Spotify—after its significant investment in an exclusivity deal.
Key Details
- For the third year in a row, the Joe Rogan-hosted podcast The Joe Rogan Experience is the most popular podcast on Spotify—although the company has not formally released streaming numbers.
- Rogan announced on May 19, 2020, that his podcast would exclusively premiere full episodes on Spotify as of December 2020 and would give him complete creative control over the show. Spotify saw a 7% increase in stock valuation after the announcement.
- The Austin, Texas-based show has recorded more than 1,900 episodes since it launched in December 2009.
- It regularly hosts significant guests, including Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson, and Kanye West, presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, comedians, sports commentators, and political commentators from across the political aisle.
- Spotify listed the five most popular U.S. podcasts in 2022 as The Joe Rogan Experience, Call Her Daddy, Crime Junkie, New York Times’ The Daily, and Armchair Expert With Dax Shepard.
Why It’s News
Spotify’s $100-million investment to purchase the Joe Rogan Experience had paid off massively in the past two years, with the podcast standing as one of the most popular in the world with millions of weekly listeners.
“Spotify Technology S.A. was betting that the podcast’s avid fan base would migrate to its platform. On the show, Mr. Rogan interviews notable guests, sometimes over a joint, about a range of topics like politics, science, and sports,” says The Wall Street Journal.
The platform, which already boasts 456 million monthly listeners, is one of the largest music and podcast apps in the world, and Joe Rogan’s influence has only brought a larger audience to the site.
The show has faced severe backlash, internally and externally, since it premiered on Spotify. In late 2020, Spotify employees delisted several episodes of the show with political commentator guests, including Milo Yiannopolis and Gavin Mcinnes. Rogan has also faced criticism for giving a platform for COVID skeptics and for making insensitive racial comments early in the show’s history, for which he has apologized.
Rogan says these controversies netted The Joe Rogan Experience an additional 2 million subscribers.