What Joe Rogan's New $250 Million Spotify Deal Means for Listeners

Joe Rogan has reportedly finalized a multiyear renewal with Spotify to host The Joe Rogan Experience, more than three years after the streaming platform paid a record $200 million for exclusive rights to the popular and controversial podcast. However, the terms of the new deal, said to be worth up to a whopping $250 million, will change going forward.

The podcast will continue to be available through Spotify, but for the first time since 2020, it will also be available to stream on other audio platforms such as Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and YouTube. The decision reflects a revised strategy launched by Spotify in 2023 to forego exclusive streaming rights and instead move towards broader distribution.

Going forward, Spotify will manage distribution and ad sales under the new deal, while Rogan will receive a guaranteed minimum fee as well as a cut of advertising revenue. The company likewise said that it will work closely with Rogan and his team "to continue to maximize the audience of the show across platforms."

"For more than three years, The Joe Rogan Experience has consistently been the No. 1 podcast across the globe," Spotify said in a statement. "Since the podcast has been exclusive, overall consumption on the platform has increased by 232 percent. As a result of this exponential growth we've seen, this has attracted a wide array of advertisers that has fueled the 80 percent increase in revenue in 2023 since 2021 including a 45 percent increase in revenue in 2023 for the show."

In early 2022, Spotify came under fire over The Joe Rogan Experience promoting Covid-19 vaccine misinformation, as more than a thousand doctors, scientists, and health professionals signed an open letter asking the company to intervene. As a result, several prominent artist including Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and Bruce Springsteen's guitarist Nils Lofgren requested that their music be removed from the catalog, causing Spotify to lose billions in market value at the time.

Shortly after, it was forced to remove 70 episodes from the podcast's back catalog due to racially insensitive content, as Rogan publicly apologized for his prior use of the N-word. Amid all of the controversy, it then came out that Spotify paid twice as much for the podcast than the $100 million deal that was initially reported by the media.

Two years removed from the scandal, however, the pros seem to outweigh the cons. Rogan's podcast is as popular as ever, and continues to attract subscribers to the streaming service.