What Joe Rogan’s $100m Spotify deal means for the future of podcasts

Spotify may be looking to do to podcasts what Google and Facebook has done to online news; become the gatekeeper. And their top down approach actually has a good chance of working, unlike rivals such as Luminary who have attempted to do this with mid-tier podcasts and failed. Striking a deal with a powerful brand like Joe Rogan as a way of firing the starting pistol on show ownership is definitely a smart move.

Analysts are predicting this might be a catalyst for more podcasts to go behind some kind of paywall/subscription service. Both listeners and producers are getting tired of relying solely on advertisers (especially after this period of market scare / advertisers fleeing).

But where are podcasters to go?

I think Spotify will continue buying out some of the biggest names in podcasting (consistently at number two in the charts is The Daily from The New York Times, but they’ve got a cat in hell’s chance of getting exclusive rights to that!). However unless you have huge popularity, don’t expect a call from Spotify.

Luminary was a podcast subscription app that launched a few years ago but was a flop due to not having exclusives people were willing to pay for; and they manipulated publishers’ RSS feeds so they weren’t getting accurate download numbers and demographic stats… which really irritated publishers.

As for the tech monopolies who are currently platforms, what will their next moves be?

If you ask Apple (both publicly and privately), they say that they have no intention of putting podcasts behind a paywall or signing exclusivity deals right now. But it’s not unreasonable to assume Apple will one day change their mind.

Google currently doesn’t have the market share to be able to do anything drastic like Spotify without it being a huge risk — their standalone podcast app only launched in 2018, by which time lots of Android users had already found a solid third party alternative.

I predict Amazon will move into podcasting pretty soon and with aggressive force. Watch this space.

Spotify already has some other deals with podcasters other than Rogan. At the moment, these shows are still available on all platforms. We can assume this will change very soon and you’re going to have to splash on a Spotify subscription if you want to keep listening.

Below is a chart of the top 20 podcasts in the US this week. There’s lots of potential here for platforms looking for exclusivity deals to snap up some talent – but it’s also worth noting that lots of popular podcasts come from news outlets (NBC, ABC, New York Times) who won’t want to go behind someone else’s paywall.

Well, not until the right price is found…