‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ will no longer be exclusive to Spotify

By Ramishah Maruf, CNN

New York (CNN) — Spotify announced a new multiyear partnership deal with podcaster Joe Rogan. His hit podcast will no longer be exclusive to the audio app and instead now be distributed to a variety of platforms, the streamer announced Friday.

“The Joe Rogan Experience” had been Spotify’s last exclusive podcast, the company confirmed.

Spotify said Rogan’s podcast will be available on Apple, Amazon and YouTube, but it did not comment further about the deal’s terms.

Rogan first launched his podcast in 2009. In the past three years, “The Joe Rogan Experience” has consistently been the number-one podcast across the globe. The show has attracted its fair share of controversy, too, coming under fire during the pandemic for Rogan’s skepticism about Covid-19.

In 2020, Spotify announced it signed “The Joe Rogan Experience” for a multi-year exclusive licensing deal. At that time, the streaming giant was aiming to become the exclusive home of the biggest podcasts in the world.

In 2019, it had redesigned the app to emphasize podcasts and had spent more than $500 million dollars on podcast producing studios.

Spotify had fared well with Rogan’s popularity. The company said that during Rogan’s exclusivity period, overall podcast consumption on the platform increased by 232%.

“As a result of this exponential growth we’ve seen, this has attracted a wide array of advertisers that has fueled the 80% increase in revenue in 2023 since 2021,” the company said in the deal’s announcement Friday.

But the company has faced serious headwinds despite the podcast’s success, and its exclusivity strategy has changed. In 2023, Spotify laid off 200 employees from its podcasting unit, and began paring back its exclusive deals.

CNN’s Jordan Valinsky contributed to this report.

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