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Comment by ActionHank | Hacker News Reader

Just remember they signed Joe Rogan for over 200 million and he's not brought in nearly that amount for them.

Did they retrench the people who made that decision? Did they retrench the management who approved that contract?

Spotify employees should be pushing for some degree of corporate and fiscal responsibility given they are retrenching, but they still gave Joe the bag.

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They also signed a deal with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry that was worth 20 million. They agreed to part ways in June. I'm guessing the reason was that it failed to deliver financially. See:

https://archive.is/Hgh3V

Reportedly only a fraction of this sum was actually paid out though.

A "fraction" of 20 million is still a lot of salary runway though. They were paid out on 2.5 years worth of that 20 million dollar deal. Even if their deal's earn out was only million dollars a year for 20 years it would be 2.5 million. Of course no earn out period is that long so it's likely they were paid out much more than that.

i feel like this is a pretty hard thing to assess without access to internal metrics

Under What metric do you apply that? What goals did they have for his program?

My understanding was the purpose of buying Joe Rogan was 2 fold, one of course is to bring in new users, but that was not the only goal (maybe not even the primary goal) the other goal was to get more of their current users to have more listen time on podcasts and less on Music, they pay far far far far less for podcasts (in many cases nothing) than they do for Music.

If they were able to shift the total listen time it could have more than paid for Rogan even with out new subscribers

The contract is up for renewal very soon so if they drop him we know he did not meet their objectives. Somehow I bet they renew

> Just remember they signed Joe Rogan for over 200 million and he's not brought in nearly that amount for them.

The fact that they signed Joe for that amount, and continued to air everything throughout all the controversies, throughout all the COVID years, and through some artist departures over him, signals that he has more than recouped that investment for them.

https://www.newsweek.com/joe-rogan-more-popular-ever-statist...

Are you missing a "not"? Otherwise you're not making sense.

Thank you!

Unless you are pretty high up at Spotify, you have literally no idea how much Joe Rogan has brought in for them. His podcast has been number one on the platform since it launched.

Personally, I cancelled my Spotify premium family plan over it. I doubt I’m the only one.

OTOH, the only reason I ever downloaded the Spotify app was because there was an episode of that show that I wanted to listen to, and it wasn't available anywhere else.

I guarantee you're not the only one. Do you think Spotify brought on someone like Rogan without considering protest cancellations?

Likewise.

Where you the only one. no..

Are you in an extreme minority that was likely far offset by new members... yes

I suspect you didn't cancel your subscription because of Joe Rogan being given a deal at Spotify.

I think you cancelled your subscription so you could TELL people you cancelled your subscription as a result of Joe Rogan being given a deal at Spotify.

Is that a useful distinction? In both cases, the event that eventually resulted in a canceled subscription was giving Joe Rogan a Spotify deal.

The second option is mildly insufferable, and a very transparent way to grift upvotes from other like minded contrarians addicted to trendy knee-jerk alarmism.

Me, pointing this out, might also be a bit insufferable, but I guess I just enjoy pointing these things out, because everyone who uses this site is so intelligent (on average).

It sucks seeing such intelligent people get caught up in these pits of cognitive dissonance.

What's the difference, and who does that difference matter to?

To Spotify, it's still a cancelled subscription and the root cause is still Joe.

No the second is the person was going to cancel anyway and Joe provides a rather weak and pathetic way to virtue signal to a very minor political in group they are "with them" while doing something they were going to do anyway

What people say vs what they do:

https://www.reddit.com/r/modernwarfare2/comments/1733bhk/im_...

I haven’t told anyone in person I did, but the fact you think I did it to virtue signal says more about you than me.

And if I was doing it to “grift internet points” nothing stops me from just lying.

Some people do things because they genuinely believe it’s the right (or at least less bad) thing to do.

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