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Comment by mvdtnz | Hacker News Reader

I feel neither positively nor negatively about Rogan himself (I've never listened to him) but it was plainly a very stupid investment on Spotify's part. Anyone could have predicted (and most of us did) that only a fraction of his audience would follow him behind the paywall and removing him from mainstream free outlets would instantly diminish his cultural relevance.

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paywall? all you have to do is sign up for the freemium version of spotify?

‘Diminishing his cultural relevance’ may have been the goal.

Reducing his audience, censoring his most controversial past episodes and preventing certain conversations from happening in front of his large audience in future?

Spotify paid $200 million… to tie a podcaster to their sinking-ship podcast platform (and this plan only works if they know and intend for their platform to sink)… just to get him from a big spotlight to a small spotlight?

Elon paid vastly more for Twitter, seemingly primarily as an act of activism.

In this incredibly divided world, politics has started to come before profit.

And when they paid an additional several hundred million buying up tens of random science and tech news and D&D podcasts - was that to intentionally kill those podcasts too? Or were they just a necessary sacrifice in order to create a more believable “we want our product to succeed” fascade, so that Joe didn’t realise he was getting tricked?

It wasn't a "sinking-ship podcast platform", it was Spotify's strategy to own content and thus reduce cost for per-play licensing.

They went for the Netflix strategy for growth. We now know the podcast-idea didn't translate into as many paid subscribers as they expected, but with ~25% of all Spotify subscribers listening to podcasts [1] it's not a "sinking-ship podcast platform"

[1] https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/spotify-podcast-subscr...

FWIW, there is rationale for platform to own content vs licensing deal that forces platform's hand to 'make unavailable' items their customers already purchased[1].

Not that I disagree with you.

[1]https://www.playstation.com/en-us/legal/psvideocontent/?et_r...

In the last few months, several podcasts that were only available on Spotify, have become available via traditional podcast means. For example, Heavyweight. Others did so earlier, though for specific reasons (Science Vs had a spat with Rogan over "dis/misinformation", where I largely agree with them factually, but disagree with them on the use of those terms, etc.).

I think it's fair to say there's a reasonable indication that Spotify exclusivity has been a bad bet for a decent amount of their podcast portfolio. Maybe it works still for Rogan-sized podcasts, but even that's unknown.

I wouldn't be dismissive of a label of "sinking ship", even though it's stronger than how I would put it -- it's plausible enough.

The frame of reference is "was", so back in 2019 when Spotify negotiated with Joe Rogan

Ha, that's fair, I missed that. I wasn't optimistic about them in 2019, but sinking ship would definitely be a strong claim about that time, and my point is moot about that time.

Probably some motivated forgetfulness on my part, because I'm just so glad that their attempts to bind podcasts exclusively to their platform seem to be failing/diminishing.

it would have made more sense to create their own record label than to try to turn a free and open platform like podcasts into a closed platform like they tried with podcasts

That would be Spotify's Direct Distribution Contract, something they also established in 2018, shortly before (or in parallel with) their podcast acquisition strategy.

> It wasn't a "sinking-ship podcast platform”

I think you may have missed the context for this thread :) You’re talking about reality - I’m talking about the hypothesis that Spotify chained Joe Rogan to their platform because they wanted him to drown, which implies not only that the platform is sinking, but that it’s doing so deliberately.

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