Joe Rogan got ripped off | Hacker News Reader

Joe Rogan got ripped off

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105 pointsarmonarani136 comments

As an avid podcast listener and casual Joe Rogan listener I can tell you that I’m probably done listening after the transition. I’m not ever going to use Spotify to listen to podcasts. Podcasts were, and should continue to be, a free RSS feed which made them great. I’m not going to help destroy that great freedom.

I don't think of Spotify as completely walled. Does the free version put ads in the middle of a podcast or only inbetween tracks?

Spotify literally does not work is some countries.

A few of the YouTubers I follow are desperately trying to move their fan base off of YT, just to make themselves more immune to the capricious whims of YT (one of them got banned temporarily for “impersonating” themselves). It’s kind of fascinating seeing podcasters give up the kind of freedom that YT producers would kill for.

They've been doing that since at least 2014. Pewdiepie joked at several points he may aswell be a hat company because that (at the time) was the majority of his income.

I think Peertube is the way to go, especially after this https://sourcehut.org/blog/2020-05-15-peertube-bootstrap-fun..., if only someone could drag content producers to choose freedom instead of walled gardens...

You make it sound like YouTubers want walled gardens, which is kind of countermanded by the constant complaints YouTubers have about YouTube. I think that YouTubers think they’re stuck with the walled garden more than anything else.

The problem for YouTubers is that their fans are on YouTube, and moving fans from one platform to another is really, really hard.

I’ve also been rather negative on the viability of distributed social media sites, because they’re really hard to explain to non-nerds. Even as someone who understands the theory and goals, dealing with picking an instance and navigating the differences is a hurdle I’m not really interesting in dealing with.

Just a quick sidenote: Joe’s friends have said that people who are throwing around numbers about how much he got from Spotify are estimating way lower than it really is. The $100M is the most common number being thrown around.

I can’t tell how much the writer knows Joe’s content, but he would probably have never went with a subscription model. The free access has always been one of the #1 things he attributes to his success. I say this as a listener from episode ~250 which is still not that long ago.

It’s clear to a long-time fan that Spotify made some assurances that their app can be downloaded for free so all his listeners can join him.

I saw the same video [0]. It would seem unlikely that Joe wouldn't have the proper business and legal advice to make a deal like this and not come out it "ripped off". He's a successful stand up, been in sitcoms and general show-biz for decades.

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Sq9r87jnRo

Unrelated but I really struggle with this kind of double and triple negative wording.

It WOULD seem UNLIKELY that he WOULD NOT have the proper advice to make a deal like this AND NOT be ripped off.

“He probably has good advisors that made sure he wasn’t being ripped off.”

It honestly took me 5 minutes to figure out what you were saying. I feel like I uniquely struggle with this, like I have some kind of undiscovered form of dyslexia. Maybe it’s just late.

It's bad writing but I think it's unusual to have that much trouble parsing it.

and that's just the money up front, there are certainly some performance bonus clauses in there as incentive, too.

Exactly. I’m pretty sure that people are significantly underestimating the value of his deal. It’s probably on the order of 3 or 4 times higher than the WSJ estimate.

Creating a subscription model for the top 5% wouldn't restrict free access. That's the big difference between the model proposed and Howard Stern's Sirius deal. Everyone else (95%) could still listen to the free (ad-funded) show, the same way they do today.

Yeah, but he also always mentioned how he doesn't want to be controlled and regulated. He rants about youtube (for all right reasons).

And now he is putting himself into a spotify box.

Sure, he can most likely retain all of his freedoms (due to his seer size), but once spotify becomes youtube for podcasts, then he could be partially blamed for supporting the very mechanism he spend most of his podcast life criticizing.

I have no idea if it’s true, but I’ve heard that a major factor was recent pushback he was getting from YouTube with respect to contrarian coverage of the pandemic. Apparently he wanted to have guests who would provide alternative public health narratives and was told that this was a no-go on YouTube. Much of his audience consumes the show as video on YouTube and Spotify is another major brand that will offer a similar experience. He is hoping that Spotify will give him more creative freedom and apparently was successful in incorporating some guarantees into his new contract. I do know that during his recent live episodes there have been opinions shared about the quarantine and the pandemic that would have caused issues with YouTube’s current policies regarding public health misinformation.

>Apparently he wanted to have guests who would provide alternative public health narratives and was told that this was a no-go on YouTube.

As it should be.

>He is hoping that Spotify will give him more creative freedom

Spreading pseudoscience isn't creative, its destructive.

> with respect to contrarian coverage of the pandemic

How is contrarian coverage "pseudoscience"?

An example of contrarian coverage is the suicide rate rising due to the Bay Area stay-at-home order: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23269396

How is a report from medical professionals on an abc affiliate contrarian?

Because by far the dominant narrative among urban, educated people is that continuing lockdowns are worth it because they prevent death from COVID-19. Arguments that the lockdowns are doing more harm than good are (wrongly, IMHO) associated with political conservatism, rejection of science, and so on.

Thus, evidence of the harm of lockdowns can be considered contrarian, regardless of whether it comes from medical professionals.

I have never been in an accident where I was helped by wearing a seatbelt, and preparations for Y2K cost many times more than any of the harm that was caused by Y2K bugs. Considering that I've never experienced malnutrition, I seem to waste a lot of time money and effort on nutrition, too.

Ignoring mental health consequences of difficult times is foolish, but this sounds much more like it was a "well, actually" sort of conversation meant to stroke people's egos.

The argument isn't that that point of view is correct. The argument is that it should be allowed to be presented.

Do they want to present it or to misrepresent it?

The problem is that Google is exposed to political, financial, and legislative risks from all sides -- or else Google would host all content, including pirated movies, and they'd pass off all liability to the primary offender.

Then they'd collect advertising revenue based on all the eyeballs they can get.

To be honest this is a novel disease that is affecting the world a lot right now and we simply don't know the best way forward.

This is not the flu, it is much worse, but we are generally not enforcing "seat belts" to protect the vulnerable even close to as much.

It's contrarian if it cuts against the majority opinion, not if it comes from some obscure source from a lunatic. There are many legitimate contrarian opinions, many of which later become the mainstream opinion.

That is a perfect example of pseudoscience, the article linked is anecdotal interview with two people working in one hospital. It never mentions anything about the rate.

From the article: "We've never seen numbers like this, in such a short period of time," he said. "I mean we've seen a year's worth of suicide attempts in the last four weeks."

In one hospital. That alone makes it pseudoscience. A years worth of suicides is likely between 10-40 suicides, which is tragi but doesn't show that the quarentine is causing the problems it says. For example, the rise could be due to medical workers being overtaxed due to the pandemic, or some change in which hospital is receiving patients like this.

That's not how science works. Please stop calling it pseudoscience just because you don't agree with the findings.

What two people say they experienced is not science. Even calling is pseudoscience is generous, it's an anecdote.

Science is based on observations. And I hope you realize the pseudoscience is far worse than anecdote (which is a personal observation).

Furthermore, economic depressions lead to suffering and death. This is a fact that's widely known and studied. Ignoring all the coming secondary effects to focus on only acute deaths from a single cause is clearly not scientific either.

Science is based on observations, an observation isn't science. That article was taking one data point, assuming the same thing was happening everywhere, and decided there was only one possible cause.

Then it's not pseudoscience either. Why so much resistance to an observation if you accept it is as such?

Taking one observation and assuming it applies everywhere with one possible cause is pseudoscience. If the article just said "we've seen a lot of suicides, here's how to get help" I would have no problems with it.

Someone who simply reads CDC recommendations with a 3 week lag would probably violate these policies.

Devils advocate here but If you extrapolate this argument to 1600s medical advice then surely you'd be correct and I think for good reason.

I'm not sure what exactly you're suggesting (if anything).

It just means that in a span of a few weeks the evidence itself (what we know and how we understand it) can contradict itself. So basically if you say that’s okay, it’s the authoritative source, that’s fine, but it means other people might not be authoritative but may be right. So the question isn’t so much why give one preeminence based on past performance but rather why censor others who might have a case to be made?

Joe Rogan typically makes a point to say what he doesn't know and tries to get interesting experts in his show. Have you watched much of his show?

He typically has no idea what they're talking about and thus lobs softball after softball at them, even when he pretends to disagree for devil's advocate sake. Most of his bigger named guests have carved out echo chambers for themselves, and Rogan lends them credibility.

You realize he doesn't have people on to grill them right? He has done well over a thousand shows with hundreds of different people. When you say 'most of his guests' are you talking about John Carmack, Tony Hawk and Rhonda Patrick or are you talking about the one time he had the guy who started the 'proud boys' on? I think a lot of people take this all or nothing stance on one bad guest out of recreational outrage without actually watching him.

I think that approach is valuable and "softballs" are only bad if you're assuming Rogan is a journalist, which he isn't. He's a comedian, an entertainer, and a conversationalist (and, of course, a martial artist). People tune in to hear him have interesting conversations with interesting (and often wacko) people.

That's his appeal--few people would be interested in hearing him grill his guests. We have CNN for that. Saying he "lobs softball after softball at them" is true but not really a bad thing given that he doesn't claim to do otherwise.

He's not an interviewer. He just has conversations with people, sometimes friends, sometimes famous scientists, and sometimes people with interesting stories.

You're free to listen to the uninterrupted hours of talk directly from the guest and form your own opinion. That's usually a far better way to learn about someone than following an opinionated interviewer asking "hardball" questions that don't get clear answers anyway and will reduce the caliber of guests to appear in the first.

Can you point to any concrete example of Joe Rogan spreading pseudoscience?

I mean, I can when the subject is drugs...

Like what ? when subject is drugs tell me

How weed is harmless and has no risks, and is actually helpful and could cure all sorts of ailments in people. Or how taking psychedelic drugs and using sensory deprivation tanks is great and you should totally try it out, no risks there.

I don’t think JR had ever claimed anything as absolutely harmless.

But he did compare harm rates, for example of alcohol, which is perfectly legal and is sold in abundance EVEN during this health crisis and weed.

Sometimes it is good to have some balance from official sources. WHO:

* Masks do not work on corona virus

* Taiwan is a Chinese province, not an independent country

* Corona virus does not transmit between people.

The WHO certainly never claimed that SARS-CoV-2 does not spread between people. They said human-to-human transmission had not been confirmed.

The very first signs of human-to-human transmission in the epidemic were on Jan 14th, as some family members of the initially-identified cluster began to fall ill. At this time, there were about ~50 identified cases, and zero deaths.

On January 20th, one single incubation period later, as healthcare workers began falling ill, both China and the WHO confirmed human-to-human transmission.

There are large numbers of examples of respiratory illnesses that do not easily transmit between humans. Most commonly, there are frequently outbreaks of H1N1 influenza from farms, with animals as the primary vector. Among coronaviruses, MERS transmits very poorly between people.

Would you have preferred the WHO loudly proclaim the virus easily transmits between people when there was no evidence that it did? That would be absurd.

Please stop spreading this misinformation.

What a strange comment.

Taiwan informed the WHO in December that person to person transmission was likely taking place[0]. The only sense in which it hadn’t been confirmed is in a tautological sense the WHO hadn’t confirmed it. Doctors in Wuhan were getting infected and Taiwan had proof of that.

[0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644...

Taiwan did not mention in their email that person to person transmission was taking place. They said that WHO should do their own investigation.

Taiwan had no proof, they just did not trust China.

Talk about a strange comment. Taiwan's email did not inform the WHO of anything at all. In fact, it is best described as nothing more than a wild-ass guess.

China notified the WHO on December 31st of a cluster of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause, and noted that the patients had been isolated.

Taiwan's health minister then emailed the WHO, suggesting that the unknown illness might well be SARS, and made note of China's acknowledgement that the patients had been put in isolation.

Taiwan had zero first hand knowledge of the the virus, and zero information on the virus beyond what China had provided to the WHO and what had been reported in social media.

Taiwan's health minister's email to the WHO was literally based on nothing more than China's own statements to the WHO, and social media rumors. That is it in its entirety.

Again, like I suggested to the original commenter, please stop spreading misinformation.

> The very first signs of human-to-human transmission in the epidemic were on Jan 14th, as some family members of the initially-identified cluster began to fall ill.

If you're referring to the case covered by the article published in The Lancet[1], those patients were admitted to hospital between Jan 10 and Jan 15.

Yet, prior to that date there were already reports the virus spread between humans.

[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

Taiwan, or its official name: the Republic of China is not a member of the UN and the US does not recognize it as an independent country either.

There is a lot of diplomatic weasel words and trade offices instead of embassies to keep that up but it suports the One China policy.

Let people decide for themselves what media to believe and what media to disbelieve. It's the only way to have a free society.

It may not work if too many people are too stupid. But it may work if enough people are smart enough. And it's the only way to have a free society.

Nothing is as destructive as someone deciding what everyone else gets to see and hear.

Tim Pool (news commentator and multi-Rogan guest) called Rogan and apparently this is misinfo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izHSJ3OFJ2E

They start out by talking about some of the issues you mentioned. They break mid-way, and apparently Tim got off the phone with Rogan and cleared up that censorship was not the primary motivator. The cut to after the Rogan call is 15:27.

Hmm. It may still have been a motivator, if not the primary one. He still intends to host clips on YouTube and Spotify probably doesn’t want to be seen as a refuge for problematic creators, so he may have reason to downplay this angle publicly.

For some reason he has done a 180 from his earlier position on Spotify as quoted in the article.

Anything Tim Pool says should be treated with a ten foot poll.

Regardless of what you think about Tim Pool, the speculation that censorship was a primary motivator of this move came from Alex Jones. So...

Or one of them said something stupid and wanted it out of podcast. Which is absolutely fine. We will never know.

Care to explain why? I'm curious.

In my experience he's as unbiased as a journalist can be regarding American happenings.

Erm... Joe knows what he is making without Spotify and it isn’t enough to make the deal seem as obviously-bad as the article makes it out to be. Also, I doubt Joe negotiated a $100 million deal without expensive legal & financial advice. If anything, the deal’s closure is evidence that the article’s assumptions are wrong.

Whenever I see an article like this I always assume it ends with "...and that's why <Joe Rogan> should have gone with me, instead. My services are very affordable and available for purchase now!"

And this one does! It ends with an ad for their company/product, which is a podcast monetization platform.

Is it still Podcasting when Spotify doesn't even have the functionality to automatically download new episodes to your device? Wasn't this, like, the whole point of Podcasts in the first place? Subscribe, and as long as you sync (== plug in) your iPod before you leave the house, it'll have all of the new podcasts you want to listen to?

I mean, yeah, I get it, phones have data plans, but still. I LOVE Spotify, I'm a family plan subscriber, etc etc. But I'm not interested in my rates going up to pay for access to content I don't care about and could get for free if I did.

I tried to switch over to Spotify as a podcast app when Sonos ditched the ability to stream from your phone (the AirPlay2 cutover), but Spotify's podcast functionality is virtually nonexistent.

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Podcasts-Automat...

The general idea in the article I think is right but there's some caveats. I don't think his audience will suffer as much as the author thinks. Joe Rogan is pretty unique in the podcasting space, Spotify is already popular and I think people in general tend to overestimate the degree of backlash for these things. (the blizzard boycott comes to mind).

Also we don't really know Rogan's plans. If he plans on keeping this going for another 10-15 years staying independent would make some sense. But if he wants to retire after his Spotify deal runs out this may not be unreasonable.

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I get clips through the YouTube algorithm and if I like them, watch the whole podcast.

point being, I think the YouTube platform has played quite a large role where users don't have to "seek out" new episodes and I don't think that can be understated.

ultimately, only the numbers will tell.

Supposedly they're still able to put clips on YouTube, you just have to go to Spotify to hear the rest of the podcast.

It definitely adds a layer of friction, though. Instead of just clicking and immediately watching the full video on YouTube, you have to shift apps, to something you might not be signed up for or want to pay for (I'm one of the latter, I used to pay for Spotify years ago but stopped and I don't want to go back to it).

I think that one thing this analysis is missing is why F1 drivers go to Ferrari. F1 drivers don't drive for Ferrari because they pay the best. They drive for Ferrari because of the dream. On Youtube Joe Rogan is just some guy. Spotify is offering Joe Rogan more than that.

Personally, I think the real point in this analysis is that 90% of people just aren't going to sollow him to spotify. Which is fine for spotify, they're buying users, but for Joe Rogan it'll be the end of his place in popular culture.

Spotify already has a spot in popular culture, so I'm not sure he loses that much.

Rogan loses a portion of his existing audience to be sure, but he gains a more committed audience this way, and those hundreds of millions of people that are already listening to Spotify may have a new favorite show.

I’d bet there is already substantial crossover between Spotify subs and JRE listeners. In hierarchy of importance Spotify is higher for me than many paid video streaming services.

My guess Howard Stern is a good example from last decade. He is still around, but mostly irrelevant.

Still has a massive audience, recently had a best selling booking, and generates headlines -- but I guess you have a unique definition of relevance. I'd encourage you to listen to his guest interviews -- they are amazing.

I was previously a Stern fan and I distinctly recall listening to him on my way to school on 9/11 as he was covering the planes hitting the twin towers. I haven't heard or seen a single thing from Stern since he switched to satellite. I have no idea how to even listen to his guest interviews if I wanted. I could search for it, but that's kind of the point, I would have to search. It's never popped up in my YT/Twitter/FB feed. Friction is powerful, especially at scale.

I used to listen to Stern every once and a while when he was on the radio. I haven't listened to Stern since his move to Sirius radio. I'm not saying it was a bad move for Stern, but he certainly lost some amount of relevance, just didn't become irrelevant.

This raises a good point unless both Joe and Spotify see the rising market adoption of podcast content blowing in their direction. That being, Spotify is mainstream enough for Joe to compound his growth still. And Joe agrees, as I doubt he would compromise prestige for dollars.

Bold statement (and I admire the act for its own sake). Let’s see how it ages, but it would be helpful to define how you measure his place in popular culture. Listeners per month?

Interestingly, Reed Hastings agrees that (viewers * time watched) is the metric that will really matter in the end: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/06/netflix-ceo-reed-hastings-su...

They drive for ferrari because its a great way to win championships. Ferrari and mercedes put 10x the budget into sport the closest rival, red bull does.

The analogy doesnt work. Rogan built a ferrari brand and now he's letting it be bought out by a midtier team with deep pockets like Stroll's dad.

F1 drivers drive for Ferrari because they want to win.

This ain't rocket surgery. Ferrari invests a ton more in their brand and their program than other teams do. The money you make outside of F1 from endorsements more than makes up the slightly lesser pay.

not only that but I kind of feel like "selling" lets down the new-media movement he's been leading

his success is basically a middle finger to traditional media and corporations - having a very small team, organic growth, and being more authentic and making millions without NEEDING to sell out.

of course I've never had a 9 figure deal so I'm soapboxing here.

but I'd be lying if I didn't say this damages what i really admired about the podcast. idk.

In podcasting, Joe Rogan is is Joe Rogan.

On Spotify, Joe Rogan is Joe Rogan with a smaller audience.

I don't see how this is "the dream".

I may be going out on a limb here, but maybe a 9-figure deal is the dream part

I'm a soon to be Google Play Music refugee (after they close up shop) and enjoy Rogan... I guess it was good timing

Ferrari definitely pays the best.

The other advantage of Ferrari for race drivers was that their testing, they had the Maranelo testing track right next to the lab.

But this now forbidden, it was an "unfair" advantage. So I see no other reason why anyone wants to work for the crazy Italians with their unusual language. If they would not pay more. I don't see the Ferrari dream being much better than the Mercedes or McLaren dream. Lots of marketing money, but as race driver above 18 you mostly go for the engineering culture.

And exactly this engineering culture got lost with Google and Apple lately. That's why people want to leave.

The math is certainly interesting. But it ignores the fact that not everyone is looking to maximize every revenue dollar. Joe Rogan has made an EXTRAORDINARY amount of money. From the outside looking in it seems silly to poo-poo a guy that's made 10s of millions because maybe he could have made 100's of millions.

They didn't ignore that fact, they explicitly mentioned it in the article.

> Stern and Rogan are already super rich. The difference between $50mm/year of profit and $100mm means zero to their day-to-day lifestyle. What I imagine does matter to them is the size of their audience and their impact, and both made choices that will limit that forever.

Ok thanks. Point stands.

If anybody lives their life exactly the way they want to live, then it's Rogan. His goals may be different from the writer's goals but I am 100% sure he got exactly what he wanted.

Anybody an idea what sidekick Jamie's cut is from this enterprise?

Can't imagine Jamie doesn't have equity in the show and remained just a employee. On this kind of level of earnings, an important part is choosing who you share with.

Cheap debt influences the cashflow multiplier in a great way when doing a discounted cash flow analysis. The estimated financial gains are off by at least a factor 2 or 3. It doesn't make sense to make a deal of 100 million when you received 30 million last year.

> Joe Rogan's podcast 'The Joe Rogan Experience' earned a staggering $30 million in revenue across 190 million downloads per month in 2019.

>In my last post I estimated Rogan was making around $64MM/year.

Colour me skeptical.

I have a hard time believing that Joe (who has been in show business a long time), or the business people he surrounds himself with as advisors, would sign a ~$100MM exclusive contact when they're printing $50MM+ a year. That doesn't make sense, does it?

His podcast is, by no means, his only business or income stream.

It makes sense if he’s not maximizing ad revenues, such as wasting precious ad time on free ads for Onnit.

In September, I wrote a post about how Howard Stern is getting ripped off by Sirius. I made the case that Howard Stern is making $90 million a year when he could be making 2-3x by cutting out the middle-man and doing a subscription podcast.

Sure, until subscription fatigue kicks in. People pay for Spotify or SiriousXM because of the overall value. I doubt many people would be interested in paying just for Stern or Rogan's podcast. That is in addition to all the other services they're already paying for, such as Netflix, Prime, HBO, etc...

This is where cable companies really screwed up.

They could have offered consumers a choice of channels instead of packages. It would have required changing their business model but most cable companies are local monopolies so they should be able to declare new economics.

With their position as ISPs for many they were well positioned to offer streaming services first. These could have subscriptions by show instead of network. I would happily pay for the handful of shows I actually watch rather than the pantheon of streaming services we have now.

LTT did an episode about the pantheon of streaming services causing a resurgence in piracy. It is getting ridiculous. Everyone wants their $8-16/mo.

Unbundling rarely works in practice.

Yep, this is very questionable (although is kind of typical of the 21st century business "knawledge").

First, if Rogan is doing this deal then he values himself at less than whatever they paid. I am assuming he has a fairly good understanding of that worth is (the guy has worked in media for a very long time) given that he knows what he earns, and the author doesn't/

Second, the value of these kind of audiences is pretty much always over-estimated. Spotify is way overvaluing Rogan's worth, and the author is way overvaluing Rogan's worth too. No, there isn't a huge subscription business here (Stern doesn't have one, people buy Sirius subs). Can you make money from podcast subscriptions? Yes. Should you? No.

Third, most of these media-ish companies don't think about this in a very sophisticated way (as Rogan's quote at the end demonstrates). They are desperate to create growth at any cost, they seldom focus on product or think about customer/supplier value, and usually have execs with bureaucratic/big media ways of thinking (which is useless for growth). I suspect this will be more Ninja and Mixer than Stern/Sirius...they have bought some listeners great...but unless they buy literally every podcast, their platform isn't growing (it is actually very like Twitch, what incentive does any podcaster have to move onto Spotify and make them rich...it is a ludicrous insight into the level of thought that goes into these huge, expensive deals...now Ninja is streaming to a few thousand rather than 30k...genius play Microsoft).

Fourth, the stuff about Spotify not having editorial control is not true. I don't know who is fooling who here but this is like Facebook acquiring WhatsApp and saying they are going to show ads...LOOOOOL. Spotify is a content company, if Facebook gets blamed for what other people right on their platform then Spotify is going to get hammered when Rogan (inevitably) does something unwise.

yea.. same thing that's happening in the live stream world with Ninja leaving Twitch and etc.

Ultimately seems to be a lose-lose-lose for the platform (where they don't pull 1/4 of their prior numbers), fans (who generally just stop caring), and creator (who makes money short term but loses major brand equity, relevance, growth)

Rogan didn't know how high he could've taken it. Now he does. Maybe he was ready to retire anyway?

> Maybe he was ready to retire anyway?

The article's revenue estimates are based on Rogan doing more work...setting up subscription programs, keeping up with YouTube's content policies to avoid getting kicked off the platform, and continuing to find podcast guests and creative material.

Perhaps he wants to kick back, not work so hard (depending on the contract he actually signed), and collect a steady paycheck? The author likens Rogan's podcast to sitting on an oilfield (where the value of oil can be easily evaluated), but creative endeavors are hardly so cut and dried.

those things you listed as "work" all still apply though, except now there's a contractual obligation

if his desire was to kick back it seems like the move would be to just relax his release schedule

wanting something steady in the chaos of creative work though, I can completely understand

The criticism in the article is based on comparing Joe Rogan's' podcast to a SaaS business and is fundamentally flawed.

>And make no mistake: Joe Rogan is a business...I think he is capable of, his corporation would easily be valued at over $1,000,000,000...

>As I pointed out in my last post, if Rogan had added subscription, he would have owned a company that looked like the world’s best SaaS business.

The problem is that there is no exit for this business. Nobody is going to pay 20x past earnings for JRE without Joe. This is the difference between being a performer (literally a gig worker), and a business owner.

I don't think he got ripped off, I for one, prefer that some audience is taken away from YouTube.

Also would like to see alternative opinions that contrast the consensus / mainstream narrative.

Also hope the video is still about on Spotify.

Sure, Rogan gave up hypothetical 10s of millions for this. But those millions required work and marketing and sponsor management, and those 10s of millions weren't guaranteed.

With Spotify he just secured a guaranteed paycheck and a guarantee that he (and his team) don't need to work nearly as hard.

And what audience does he really lose? Non-paying customers via YouTube and podcast apps can be non-paying customers on Spotify and it makes no difference to him.

Hundreds of millions or billions, not 10s of millions.

May be I am dense but how is a podcast generating a recurring revenue? IMO the podcast is heavily tied to the main guy. In this case it’s only worth that much because Joe Rogan is there. If he gets hit by a bus or decides to just leave, Spotify is fucked. To me that is what this makes the whole deal risky. With that kind of risk, I don’t expect Spotify to pay up that much.

He got ripped off and so did the rest of us.

This whole ‘privatization of podcasting’ process is nothing but harmful to culture.

Spotify is a pure predator.

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/on-the-spotify-joe-rogan-...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23261495

Yup - seems like these support the assertions.

> As I said in my last post, were he to build the level of advertising and subscription revenue I think he is capable of, his corporation would easily be valued at over $1,000,000,000...

That's a big _if_, and so far as I can see, there's not much in the way of justification for that in the article.

Not to mention if the podcast got so full of advertisements and money grabs like that many people, including me, would stop listening. I’ve seen so many podcasts start out good then get more and more into advertising obligations, which often comes with things such as increasing the volume/interruption characteristics of said ads.

I'm lost at the units. Could someone tell me how much is $100-$200mm ? (dollaromillimeters?)

Edit: Found on Quora what MM means:

>Lowercase "mm" does mean millimeters, but uppercase "MM" is used for millions. "Mille" is Latin for "thousand". MM is Mille Mille.

```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.```

Seems like Rogan is going to retain upload rights to other platforms, negating nearly all the articles assertions.

Whoever wrote this doesnt have a clue as to the inner-workings of this deal.

They certainly aren't given Joe Rogan very much credit, that's for sure.

I don't really care if this move is economically less profitable to Joe Rogan and don't understand why this author does either. Anyways, I have been a long term fan of JRE. In the inital phase of lockdown, Joe was pro-lockdown but in the past weeks (shrugging and not commenting at the mention of Elon Musk's tweets in Tim Poole's episode), he's switched to anti-lockdown which started around the Elon Musk episode. The episodes after that have received a lot of criticisim as well.

Now I force myself to see all his episodes with utmost skepticism and doing that I can neither enjoy nor tolerate them anymore. And now with this move to Spotify, I will finally have a reason to quit, sadly. It was great while it lasted though.

What are your issues with how Rogan justifies his position of being anti-lockdown?

It's the transition that seems strange to me. They have been ripping on politicians all this time, those who were anti-lockdown in the beginning of the crisis.

Its not just the anti-lockdown comments that turned me off. I can agree to some degree with that. There's more like in the episodes that followed afterwards with Brendan Schaub or fight companion where they are just spouting stupid shit. But I guess you can't always invite the best guests.

I don’t think this means anyone was “ripped off.” If someone offered me $100m/yr hassle free vs needing to run an entire company and making a billion I’d take the $100m every time.

lol this article casually talks about how he'd have to run the business himself "(not hard though)"

I don't think you realize that when you get to extreme wealth, your time is the most precious thing you have. Having a month more of free time every year is really priceless.

He made a good deal.

Didn't we all (well, most of us) get ripped off by becoming employees? Where do you draw the line?

blah blah blah...at 52 he has FU money even for his children. Once this contract is over he can try a new model, with plenty of runaway.

Colbert is bigger than Rogan, has way more money and negotiating leverage, has experience running his own ship, but still had to tone down his humor to grandpa levels of stale. Ba dump tss, play him off Johnny, kind of stuff. Colbert could also say "fuck you" to the world, but he would also be saying "fuck you" to himself.

Gee...if only he had a middleman like you to save him all that money for a %, then he could cut out all those middlemen taking a % you are complaining about.

Rogan has also said he doesnt like paywalls because your growth figures drop substantially. We have no idea about his churn figures, being free might be a requirement or a long term growth play.

Taking into account that all Rogan does these days is defend Trump, I could care less. Let his podcast shrivel away hidden behind a Spotify paywall.

haha, he is a democrat and had ton of dem candidates on his show. Just because he thinks biden is an awful candidate doesn't make him trump fan.

Not every decision trump or his administration does is bad. That's a fact. Is he a manchild only interested in himself? Absolutely but,

If trump says 2+2=4 are you going to argue with that? Does agreeing that 2+2=4 makes you trump supporter?

Than why are almost all his recent shows about how Trump is right, or how the media is attacking Trump. The media has a "right" to attack Trump for blatantly lying. Do you even listen to his shows?

He is giving trump dues when they are due.

I have seen some of those questions trying to get tramp to fail for some quick news.

Those attempts are as childish as trump is. And it doesnt belong to journalism.

Uhhm... he also said trump was right to close the border with china and eu at the start of pandemic and that he was called rasist for it. He was right though, that was the right move. Whatever the motivation, restricting frivolous travel is a way to go to fight pandemics.

He laughed at some joke tweets.

I cant recall anything else apart from that.

Look he is a democrat by believes, he wants tulsi gabbard to be the president.

> Do you even listen to his shows?

this is not reddit, cut this out or get out.

Maybe Joe doesn't want to work 16 hour days to become a billionaire, maybe he wants a giant check and to keep living a life he's enjoying.

This tunnel vision of this place is incredible. Not everyone wants to be Elon Musk. Some people are happy where they are.

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