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That sounds like he won't be on YouTube anymore. Shame. I don't really like using Spotify.
he should go back to making people eat bugs on TV
I probably will never watch it now since I don’t have a Spotify subscription and don’t need one. Is Spotify free for Podcasts?
He said in the announcement his podcast is remaining free. I don't know if you have to register with Spotify to listen, but I would think you would.
This deal doesn't make a ton of sense without that (also that is what "exclusive" means). Rogan = Howard Stern, Spotify = XM Radio.
That’s the whole point, killing open podcast distribution. They want the only viable place to get podcasts to be the Spotify app which they control.
From memory, you don't need an account to use spotify. You don't even need to download an app.
Spotify has an ad-supported free tier. This will be available on that, along with all their other podcasts.
This might be Europe’s answer to YouTube.
Spotify is just as ban-happy as YouTube.
Links? Much more aware of the YouTube scene
Spotify was the one who conspired with Facebook, Apple and Google to ban Alex Jones and others. So if Joe is moving off of YouTube because he doesn't like the censorship, he's not getting anything better with Spotify.
How many times are you going to post this same fear mongering comment.
Too bad, I occasionally enjoy his show, depending on the guest.

I don’t use Spotify and I won’t bother with an account just for Joe. I hope he is getting good revenue from Spotify to make up for loss of listeners. I discovered him from Apple’s podcast app.

Ben Thompson & James Allworth had a nice discussion recently on the podcasting space and how Spotify is posed to close over this space.

https://overcast.fm/+BihnTujyQ

Disregarding over all the negatives of centralizing podcast discovery in one place, I would love to pay one fee and get 0 ads on all the episodes. Where the money is then distributed to the podcast hosts I listen to the most (like Spotify does already with music).

It's so bizzare to me how ads are still a thing. I never ever bought anything from an ad (my mind subconsciously ignores everything I hear in an ad & often paints the product in the ad in a negative light). And I lose quite a chunk of my time speeding over (the same ads) in the episodes I listen too.

Spotify is free with ads though. So it's more like Joe isn't running his own ad program, but instead letting Spotify run the ads, or provide premium ad-free tier.
Sure, I'd love to have a model where if you don't pay a premium fee, you get the ads as part of the episode. However if you do pay, those ads go away.

Although it does question who would pay to put ads in the first place if you can skip them. And people that will pay to skip are ones you want to target.

I hope there is a model that can work that makes ads worse off than alternatives as they are cancer.

Spotify runs intentionally annoying and frequent ads for itself, saying they'll go away if you pay them. I pay, it's very cheap for how much I use it.
I just hate how Spotify is trying to bring music back into the pre-download era.

As a society, we somehow decided paying for and downloading DRM-free music is acceptable (though strangely not for movies and shows), but now you have albums becoming Spotify exclusives, and (just like with movies and shows) I can either sign up for this streaming service or hope I can download 'em through torrent or YouTube[0]. :T Ech

0: youtube-dl -i -f 140 -o '%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' https://youtu.be/hzpDOB2JYKc?list=PLXPYMcRIi2fHdvKx6Orw2ux9L...

Apparently as a podcast consumer you prefer the "premium" Spotify model. As Thompson and Allworth have explained numerous times, they'll never be on Spotify. Centralization is not the reason for this decision, even though it's bad for humans in general. The main reason is they want a direct relationship with their customers, which may be redundant to say because does anyone on Spotify actually have a customer other than Spotify? (OK your link to some goofy aggregator instead of the actual Exponent podcast [0] sort of undercuts this; well played.) Interestingly, Thompson has explored other funding mechanisms for his other podcasts [1]. He prefers "open and paid" to "closed and free-as-in-beer". I have "subscribed" to several podcasts that would do well to use his tech; after paying the yearly fee I was given a link to a "secret" feed that could be shared with anyone if I or the podcast app I'm using chose to do so.

In many podcast apps, you can fast-forward through advertisements. When Spotify decides they have to have advertising in addition to subscriptions in order to make investors happy, their app won't allow such fast-forwarding. In that sense Spotify's new podcast model is a bit of a scam on investors. Buying talent with invested money makes sense as long as that investment is coming in. After that stops, the underlying business won't support it, and stars like Rogan will be back on RSS.

[0] https://exponent.fm/

[1] https://stratechery.com/2020/dithering-and-the-open-web/

> Disregarding over all the negatives of centralizing podcast discovery in one place, I would love to pay one fee and get 0 ads on all the episodes. Where the money is then distributed to the podcast hosts I listen to the most (like Spotify does already with music).

This is one aspect of ad-free monetization that I'm not really comfortable with. I value my content for reasons other than "how much of my time they take" - in fact, for a given amount of information, the podcast is more valuable the shorter it is.

I really just want a model where I pay some dollar figure in exchange for each episode or set of episodes (or album or discography for music, etc.) - high-value podcasts are free to set higher fees, and I'll pay more for them.

Basically I want podcasts on Bandcamp, I guess.

This makes me incredibly sad: not that we are losing Rogan's show, but that Adtech is finally absorbing the last type of media that was truly Free.
I agree, the idea of my podcasts becoming infected with non-stop ads keeps me up at night. But you know what doesn't keep me up all night? My Eliza mattress. You see the folks at Eliza designed a mattress that allows you to create your own website in minutes. Eliza's network of doctors can review your mattress's website and prescribe the best medication to regrow it's natural hair. Don't forget to use the promo-code HACKER at checkout for 3.14% off and free shipping!
Let me finish my Best Fiends game first. It's friends without the r.
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Adtech would actually make it free. Arguably this is more like cable / Netflix than adtech
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Now my podcast player and by extension adtech markets know what I listen to, when I listen to it, how long I listen, when I stop, when I fast forward/skip, etc., with no way to opt out. This is not freedom.
You have to pay for cable / Netflix. Spotify is free (with ads).
I pay for Spotify and don't get ads, so its not really adtech for me.
Paying for Spotify does not imply that they cease spying on you, only that they aren't using that information to serve you ads on their platform.
Rogan had ads on his podcast even before this partnership, and has had them for a long time now. I don't think that adtech is going away as long as there is a cost for the creator to make the content. Rogan (and other podcasters) have to pay for their studios somehow, and as long as the ads remain skippable (ex. at the beginning of the show like Joe has) I'm OK with it.
I don't care about ads, I care about walled gardens. Especially walled gardens that are designed to spy on you. Right now there are basically no metrics adtech companies have for how listeners behave, and this changes that.
Spotify doesn't add ads to music if you pay for it. I don't know about podcasts. If it was a viable business strategy for them to be paid-only, I think they would have done it, I'm pretty sure they make much more profit on paying customers than free ad-supported ones.
Again, ads are not the issue. The freedom to listen without being spied on is.
You really think your http requests aren't being "spied on"? Especially since virtually every podcast is served via a CDN.
You really think your phone conversations aren't being "spied on"? Especially since virtually every phonecall is set up via SS7.
No, I'm not a conspiracy freak with a persecution complex.
I download podcasts in bulk by downloading every available episode, and then listening in the offline audio player of my choice. I repeat every year or three when I catch up on a particular podcast. I'm unwilling to give any further information about myself to podcast publishers.
For shows that do fresh ad reads every episode, I don't even skip them. Just the slight difference of not being pure repetition every time makes them so much more bearable.
I'm not sure why you think Youtube is "truly free". They run an enormous amount of advertising. Rogan's show has always been ad supported. Possibly you use an ad-blocker, like I do, and don't see them.
The Joe Rogan Experience is currently available on many different platforms, not just YouTube.

This, however, is an exclusive deal with Spotify, so you will only be able to get it from Spotify going forward. Hence less free.

It's not YouTube, but podcasting over rss feeds as a means of distribution that is 'free' in the pertinent sense.
Joe initially said he didn't want to go to Spotify because they don't pay creators.

I guess a few million made that thought go away.

More than a few is my guess
a few million? I would guess ~$100mm
More than that, I think he brings in 30mm a year on his own, for a multiyear deal I bet its way over 200mm
Sounds like they started paying creators.
They are paying a handful of creators who have leverage. I don't think they're making any changes to their per-play payouts.
He also said he's quit when he got bored with it. Hard to do when you're in a multi-year licensing deal.
Joe "Spotify doesn't make any sense" Rogan
Let's not forget when Howard Stern went to satellite radio. That deal was worth $500M.
If it's on Spotify does it still count as a "podcast"?
So what in the definition of a podcast precludes it being available on one platform?
Mainly the mechanism for discovery & delivery - podcasts used to be RSS or Atom + Audio which allowed for repackaging and offline play.

With Spotify you need their specific app to listen. You have offline on premium but not on the free level.

Joe is now a feature of Spotify rather than being it's own destination.

RSS pointing to audio files versus a closed platform. Same way a WhatsApp message isn't an email.
That's mixing the medium and the content to me like how Art Deco isn't just architecture it's a style.
If they broadcast them over radio, is it still a podcast? Emailed out the audio files to a mailing list? Distributed them on cassette tape? It seems to me the format is part of it. RSS or something equivalent (Atom), feeding audio files to whatever client you bring, is a podcast. Youtube videos aren't podcasts just because I listen to them in the background (though one might also have a youtube video of one's podcasts) or because I could youtube-dl the audio and listen to it. The format is what gave it the name—if you can't consume it in a podcast client, it's not a podcast. My physical mailbox and my email box both contain pretty similar things, but my email reader can't read my physical mail, because it's not email. If you send me a letter, I don't receive an email, because you didn't send one. If you publish your audio interviews in a closed platform, I can't receive a podcast, because you're not publishing one.
The main thrust of what I'm saying is that RSS is a very very specific part of just the distribution of the actual content. Everything except the RSS and use any app is there on Spotify; the functionality of an open app (download, speeds, RSS feeds etc.), the content style, etc.

Personally I'm not a fan of Spotify locking down podcasts because I do like that I can use whatever app I like but I'm not going to call something not a podcast because it's annoying to get.

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This reminds me of Howard Stern’s move to Sirius.

I would love if Spotify would allow podcast creators to set music breaks and play my music in between some of the more segmented podcast episodes.

Rogan said in his instagram post the podcast will stay free, I don’t think this will drive down listenership. With spotify hosting the content he will be able to have Jamie pull up lots more because of fair use, YouTube’s ContentId won’t pull the videos and steal the ad revenue. I think this is the biggest motivation for the move as he is often frustrated with that issues. Also continuing to put clips on YouTube will continue to grow the audience. I’d love to know how much the deal was worth, I bet somewhere around 150 million a year for 3-5 years.
Yeah I suspect Youtube's policies is the main reason to switch rather than any limitations with the audio podcast in RSS. They always have an enormous amount of concern in trying to follow Youtube's policies and not get demonetized/strikes. Given video RSS is not popular, switching to Spotify makes a lot of sense. The RSS feed may have been collateral damage.
Platform shifts are enough to lose significant viewership.
It work the opposite way too, wherein platforms lose users due to undesired changes. YouTube's banning/striking/demonitizatation of high profile channels, something that Joe often says he's afraid of, could be seen as an undesirable platform change.
> I don’t think this will drive down listenership

I do, I think his podcast has benefited massively from being pushed out by the YT algorithm. Think a not insignificant percentage of his listeners didn't even get into it because they were looking for a podcast but because they were watching a YT video and the algorithm fed them a clip or an episode.

His format became so popular on YT that YouTubers started to replicate it.

So I won't be able to watch the full episodes on YouTube any longer?

Where will the videos be hosted?

Answer to my own question: Spotify began testing video podcasting last year according to The Verge - https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/19/21263927/joe-rogan-spotif...

I guess now I'm wondering if all of his existing clips and episodes will disappear from YouTube? I would think not... but I don't ever recall finding any podcast on Spotify from a Google search result. Findability might take a hit.

They must be paying him a shitload. He has spoken with multiple guests about how he loves being independent, having full control etc.
Or they've put a big enough sweetener in the contract that he's willing to take the risk. A per episode contract with a buyout if he gets kicked off (to cover losses while he reestablishes ad relationships when they kick him off) would be pretty sweet.
Does this mean it will no longer be on Youtube? That really sucks because I like reading the comments even if they are 90% banter.
I'm hoping this peak Rogan
If that means he's no longer going to be on YouTube, that's going to suck. That's been the only way I've been watching/listening the show for awhile now.

And it's going to be a lot more out-of-sight, out-of-mind for a lot of people if it's not up there with their normal YouTube video browsing. I'm sure they got a ton of money up front for that deal though.

From his post about it on IG:

> We will still have clips up on YouTube but full versions of the show will only be on Spotify after the end of the year.

:-(

Does Spotify play video though? I have seen those little looping background animations they have for some songs, but I have never seen a full blown music video or podcast video on there.

EDIT: I see a "Podcasts & Videos" category, so I guess there are.

the video will be on spotify? what does that mean?
I honestly don’t care. But Spotify podcasting is so shitty compares to overcast.

The fact that music is mixed up with podcasts makes search and discovery much much worse

So it won’t be on YouTube anymore?
It says he has creative freedom but would they seriously let him bring Alex Jones back on the podcast under the Spotify banner?

Personally I think that's probably a good thing because I find mainstreaming conspiracy theorists completely awful but I really don't know what it'll do to his fanbase given that they were big on this whole independence and do what you want brand that he had going on

He has creative freedom until something crazy hits the media. Though given how exhausted everyone is of these battles these days, I'm not sure anything he could do would generate sufficient outrage.
When widespread outrage is measured simply by twitter likes, I feel there is no end to the outrage machine. The cost of participating is zero while the dopamine hit of lending your support to some presumed moral issue non-zero. And therein lies the problem with adjudicating moral issues through social media. There is zero cost to join in the mob and so these tempests appear to be much stronger than they actually are. If there were a tangible cost to signing on to these outrage mobs, there would be much fewer of them and it would also be a more accurate metric.
I think the real problem started in the early '10s, when mainstream journalists got lazy af and just started combing Facebook and Twitter for material rather than doing actual journalism. It started with "crowdsourced" journalism like photos and videos of actual notable events, but devolved into internet drama stuff pretty quickly.

Many people saw what was happening and started treating Twitter as a legitimate news source to try and 'scoop' the major news outlets. Once it was obvious that being on Twitter gave you an outsized voice, it attracted all sorts of bad actors.

The 2016 election really threw it into overdrive though. Part of me wonders if Trump's whole Twitter strategy is to rile up the left because most of his base is old people on Facebook or Nextdoor. The young edgelords who were already using Twitter didn't take any of it seriously because they were just using it to troll people with 4chan memes about using bleach as eyedrops anyway.

Those episodes get great views; I enjoy them because I find his gonzo-levels of speculative fringe insanity to be entertaining and humorous.

But I get it, some folks think that all dangerous things should be regulated or banned; especially speech.

What happens if the conspiracy theorist is someone you agree with? Do we still avoid mainstreaming them?
I wanted to avoid starting a discussion about conspiracy theories which is why I qualified it as personal, but given that you're asking, I categorically reject conspiracy theories because conspiracy logic is by definition paranoid, and I don't believe any of them.
So all it takes to shortcut your "rational examination of the evidence at hand" loop is to have someone label a subject as 'a conspiracy'? That's certainly an interesting way to move through life.
No. Where did I say that? What makes me disregard a subject is if the person advocating it uses conspirational logic to make their case.
What is "conspiratorial logic?"

Humans conspire _all the time_; the whole of human history is marked by innumerable conspiracies between humans to achieve shared goals.

Believing that it's possible for humans to conspire isn't wrong, it's rational.

>What is "conspiratorial logic?"

Making claims without having evidence for it, believing that shadowy cabals of people are somehow running the world or entire organisations (actually pretty much impossible in modern times), adopting scientific language but actually not understanding how science works (anti-vaxxers, 9/11 truthers, flat earthers etc..), making extraordinary claims or rationalisations without having an extraordinary good reason to make them, generally being paranoid and framing everything as some sort of power play, believing that everyone who disagrees with them is part of some establishment or has a hidden agenda, and so on.

>Believing that it's possible for humans to conspire isn't wrong, it's rational

Conspiracy theorists don't just believe that it's possible for humans to conspire, they believe that humans conspire all the time and use it as an explanation for claims that don't hold any water. Virtually 99.9% of conspiracy theories are wrong even if one or two happen to be right by accident, so it's useless as a way of approaching the world.

Wow such en enlighted individual. Ironically you don't realize it's your smug self righteousness that allows corrupt people to scream conspiracy theory anytime they are being exposed. I can guarantee some of the things you think are "conspiracy theories" are 100% true.
So you believe the official account of everything? Authority is everything to you?

What about all those conspiracies that turn out to be true? Libor rate fixing, US tapping merkel, certain groups in media conspiring with certain political party, etc? Every war we've been involved in the last few decades have been conspiracies. Or did you forget about yellowcake?

Extreme paranoid thinking is detrimental but so is extreme naivety. Categorically rejecting conspiracy theories is as ridiculous as categorically accepting official narrative.

So do you accept everything Trump says as gospel? Should we shut down CNN/MSNBC/etc since they peddled conspiracies about Putin owning Trump?

For someone who rejects paranoia, you seem quite paranoid about conspiracies...

I will get downvoted for saying this. Spotify was the one who conspired with Facebook, Apple and Google to ban Alex Jones and others. So if Joe is moving off of YouTube because he doesn't like the censorship, he's not getting anything better with Spotify.
It is weird to me that even gimlet podcasts are not exclusive to Spotify.

But JRE will become exclusive

they are starting to release them early on spotify and then a few days later to rss. I think they are also doing "bonus" episodes or something. I think they are boiling the water and we are the frog
100M+, Same with Bill Simmons on the Ringer. His was 86M I think, Joe's is like 100M+
With RSS/Atom, the history so far is that any use case of open feeds that gets popular enough is eventually consumed by platforms, with the feeds discontinued.

Same with podcasts: the current open golden age always felt like was going to be temporary and so far Spotify looks like the most likely player to eat the mainstream.

If it's not on the Apple Podcasts app I won't be listening to it any longer. Ah well, probably better to support smaller podcasters with my listening time.
Free or not, Spotify is still not available in some countries.

I know that only a tiny minority of people is affected by this, but I still don't like that they chose geo-restricted service. :/

People will probably mirror the podcast all over the web.