Joe Rogan’s $100 Million Spotify Deal Adds $1.7 Billion to Spotify Market Cap

Money moves.

Joe Rogan
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Podcast king Joe Rogan not only personally reaped riches from his reported $100 million podcast deal announced last week with Spotify, but the news also jacked up the value of the streaming platform itself. 

In a recent interview with Rogan in The New York Times, writer Bari Weiss notes that within just 23 minutes of announcing the landmark deal, Spotify added $1.7 billion to its market cap. 

The in-depth report also includes Rogan’s thought on why his podcast has surged past traditional media, and how the stand-up comic, UFC color commentator and former Fear Factor host became, in the Howard Stern-inspired phrase used by the Times, “The King of All Podcasting,” whose The Joe Rogan Experience gets 190 million downloads a month.

Rogan himself credits some of his success–and the podcast industry as a whole–to the ease of which podcasts can be consumed by listeners.

“Nobody ever thought: We need to gear our entertainment, our media, to people who cook, who jog, who hike, people who drive,” Rogan told The Times. 

“Even books on tape can require too much thinking.” But a podcast, he said, “doesn’t require that much thinking at all. You get captivated by the conversation. One of the things about this medium in general is that it’s really easy to listen to while you do other stuff.”

Rogan also weighed on why many people prefer podcasts to TV talk shows.

“I would imagine on a show like Seth Meyers there’s a bunch of other opinions involved,” Rogan said. “Right or wrong, in podcasting you’re getting that very pure, individual perspective. 

“On my show, it’s my opinion and the guest’s opinion. That’s it. On network, it’s a focus-group collective idea of what people are going to like or not like. You don’t get anything wild. You don’t get anything that will get you fired.”

And as for whether his show would change as a result of the blockbuster Spotify contract, Rogan had a simple answer: “Why would I sell out now? You sell out to get what you want.”

For more, read the full Times interview here and watch Rogan’s latest podcast interview with Kevin Hart above. 

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