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Comment by bgorman | Hacker News Reader

It is not an absurd investment, Spotify is a commodity technology and taking away Joe Rogan podcast from their biggest competitor (Apple) provides much needed differentiation. Joe Rogan's podcast was the number one podcast on Apple Podcasts. Now it isn't available at all.

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So you buy out Apple's number 1 podcast...and then Apple has another number 1 podcast. And you're sitting with a lame duck, as is evidenced by TFA.

Is Spotify going to blow another 100 mil on that one and hope for the best?

They messed up by betting large on a celebrity and ignoring the fact that Joe Rogan wasn't a cultural fit.

I don't think you understand the number of monthly listeners he draws, it was around 200 million or so. If you compare it to Howard Stern's contract of 100 million a year, it's really not a huge stretch for Joe Rogan to negotiate that price for a multi year deal and exclusive rights to the back catalog. You can't suddenly snap your fingers and generate a huge audience, extensive content and marque brand into existence.

They tricked a bunch of users over to their (awful) podcast playing experience, playing (free) podcasts is cheaper than paying for music for your subscribers. I don't think they've made their money back on it yet but any user that plays a podcast is just free (or unspent) money for them.

> They messed up by betting large on a celebrity and ignoring the fact that Joe Rogan wasn't a cultural fit.

He's a cultural fit for x hundreds of millions. You may not fall into that demographic, but there's no discounting that other cultures exist outside of your own.

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