6 ms·

It will be interesting to see how it goes. On the one hand, this could be a lot like Stern going to satellite radio: he went from being one of the biggest pers

by skohan 6y ago

It will be interesting to see how it goes. On the one hand, this could be a lot like Stern going to satellite radio: he went from being one of the biggest personalities in media to someone I don't ever think about. At the same time, it's super interesting that Rogan negotiated a deal which appears to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars for Spotify to licence his content for 3 years, after which point he could put it all back on YouTube if he wanted. The fact that he had that kind of leverage as an independent creator who started by recording his friends clowning around at his house and now has presidential candidates knocking at his door begging for an interview shows the power of independent media

cwhiz 6y ago
I have been watching his podcast for a while but I won’t follow him to Spotify. I would switch to Spotify if Spotify would create a proper Apple Watch app with LTE streaming. Unfortunately, Spotify seems intent on trying to “punish” Apple. I think the JRE brand will be diminished but only time will tell.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- k12sosse 6y ago
  Don't get it mistaken. Spotify hate all of their users, not just the Apple crowd. They tinker with their app too much, and with seemingly little value. Yep, I'm still pissed about removing long press to preview
  - webninja 6y ago
    At least the Spotify UX is still better than Apple Music! I'd love it if Spotify would let you sort your playlists by last listened to like Pandora somewhere in the app. Currently I have to search and scroll every time to nearly the bottom of the library to find my Workout playlist which I use religiously at the gym.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  I don't get the love for video podcasts. I find it far more efficient to just listen while doing something else (such as driving or working at my computer). As long as I can get Rogan on my podcast app, nothing really changes for me.
  - cwhiz 6y ago
    To each their own. JRE is the only podcast I watch. You miss detail on his show if you can’t see the discussion. The episodes with Elon Musk come to mind. Seeing his facial expressions and reactions is more powerful than just hearing it. And, obviously, seeing him smoke a blunt was surreal and not something you can capture in an audio feed. My point was that you could enjoy JRE the way you wanted to. Now you’ll have to enjoy it the way Spotify tells you to. As far as I know his episodes will be pulled off other platforms in September.
    - jimmydddd 6y ago
      Agreed. But I did enjoy watching the podcast more when they actually showed the videos they were talking about. Now they still talk about videos, but never show them due to copyright concerns. That can be a bit annoying, although I know it's not JR's fault.
    - koheripbal 6y ago
      I feel like that's one example that everyone cites - sort of proving the rule that 99% of his podcasts can be listened to without missing anything.
      - cwhiz 6y ago
        It’s the most obvious one. But I don’t need to explain myself to you further. I prefer JRE video podcasts.
  - chrledntsurf 6y ago
    I would wager most people who watch podcasts on youtube are using it as a second screen while on their phone, tablet, laptop etc
dpweb 6y ago
Stern had bonuses to grow the sirius audience if I remember correctly. Amazing considering Sirius had like 600k subscribers at the time! Stern was at his height in 2001-2004 I think was peaking at 25m listeners in the mornings on terrestrial radio. Which was fucking massive. Dropped off huge on day 1 at Sirius and I don't think ever recovered most of his audience. Interesting that audience size != what's a good deal for the broadcaster. Like music however I suspect the REAL value is in the 'back catalog'.
- ramblerman 6y ago
  > Like music however I suspect the REAL value is in the 'back catalog'. Really? As a semi frequent JRE listener, if I missed an interesting guest I'll still go back and listen, but I'm not particularly motivated to go and listen to an interview from 1 year ago, or any historical one for that matter. It needs to be current for me, I'm not convinced it has the replayability of music, or a tv show like friends say.
  - manigandham 6y ago
    There's a 3rd option between latest vs replay called older episodes you haven't watched yet. He has almost 1500 episodes covering thousands of hours. Many people listen to the back catalog while waiting for the latest episodes or more content from the interesting guests and topics.
  - S_A_P 6y ago
    Agreed. Most of what he talks about is timely/topical. I suspect maybe in 5-10 more years it could get interesting again.
  - ambicapter 6y ago
    Really? If a guest I'm interested in did an interview two years ago and none since, I don't really have a choice, I'm going to listen to that interview.
  - oblio 6y ago
    If Reddit, HN and similar sites are any indication, you're right. Views, clicks, comments, etc., fall of a cliff for content older than N units of time.
lazyant 6y ago
> ... shows the power of independent media Yes, as in "it's possible", the same as it's possible for an unknown author to be a best selling author (like JK Rowling). No as in it's an outlier or the exception. How many cases like this do we have? , esp. considering the consolidation of mass media in a few companies?
- Mary-Jane 6y ago
  I'm curious what your point is. Do you expect that anyone with a mic ought to be able to experience Rogan's success?
  - jeromegv 6y ago
    The point I believe is that you can't say that "independent media" is now such a strong force when the amount of people that have achieved success within that field is incredibly small (compared to existing large media). Can agree or not, but i believe it's the point.
    - cameronbrown 6y ago
      I disagree. There are many YouTube political commentators pulling in more daily views than CNN. Younger people hate the typical mainstream media outlet because they know it's full of propaganda.
      - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
        Does propaganda here mean organized baloney as opposed to individual baloney?
        cameronbrown 6y ago
        Yes. Someone stating their honest-to-god opinion and how they came to it is not propaganda but organised attempts to push certain narratives are. Individuals can definitely shill for their side, but then they wouldn't be very popular with the audience.
nlh 6y ago
Don’t make too many assumptions about Stern just because he dropped off your radar in ‘06. His show on SiriusXM continues to be renewed (though it might actually end soon - he’s getting exhausted). As of 2015 his contract was worth $80 million PER YEAR and the estimates were that his audience is around 3.5 million highly engaged listeners. Yes, a fraction of what JRE gets in downloads, but hey...$80 million per year. Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/16/business/media/howard-stern-and-siriusxm-reach-new-deal.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/16/business/media/howard-ste...
- skohan 6y ago
  Not to say that $80 million/3.5 million listeners is anything to scoff at, but it's hard to argue that his cultural significance is vastly diminished. Others have said he was reaching 25 million listeners at his peak so 3.5 million is quite a step down from that. Now that might be just fine for Howard Stern, like it might be just fine for Joe Rogan, but I think it's fairly likely that this kind of deal does come down to trading cultural cache, and one's status as a household name for cold hard cash at the end of the day. In that sense, Rogan's move to spotify might be more like a popular touring act being put to pasture as a headliner in Vegas than it represents him taking on the mantle of mainstream media. I suspect Rogan will see somewhat less of a drop-off than stern since the barrier to entry for Spotify is significantly less than satellite radio, but I suspect we will see that the medium has been a major component of his success: his show is pretty good when it's free and when it's everywhere. In other words, like Howard Stern was the best thing you could find when flipping channels on the way to work, Joe Rogan's content is often worth a click in a sea of mediocre content. Whether people will actively seek it out remains to be seen.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    As much as I hate to admit it, I think more casual users use Spotify than use podcasts. Anything that isn’t available in my podcast player is invisible to me personally. But I’m probably in the minority. Just like anything that doesn’t have an RSS feed is invisible to me. But again, I realize that I’m in the minority.
bjourne 6y ago
Undoubtedly that is what will happen with Joe Rogan too. Money talks. PewDiePie went through roughly the same transition.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  I don't think they are exactly comparable circumstances because podcasts on Spotify are still free, where as Stern made the switch to a paid-platform. In my case, I'll probably stop listening because my specific podcast app (podkicker) doesn't look like it can pull from spotify (maybe none can).
throwawaymsft 6y ago
The long-form format is a huge part. The regular media is not incentivized to air a 3-hour interview with a thoughtful interviewer. No, you'll get a 2-minute clip on CNN designed to extract click-bait soundbites from the guest.

by skohan 6y ago

cwhiz 6y ago

I have been watching his podcast for a while but I won’t follow him to Spotify. I would switch to Spotify if Spotify would create a proper Apple Watch app with LTE streaming. Unfortunately, Spotify seems intent on trying to “punish” Apple. I think the JRE brand will be diminished but only time will tell.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
k12sosse 6y ago
Don't get it mistaken. Spotify hate all of their users, not just the Apple crowd. They tinker with their app too much, and with seemingly little value. Yep, I'm still pissed about removing long press to preview
- webninja 6y ago
  At least the Spotify UX is still better than Apple Music! I'd love it if Spotify would let you sort your playlists by last listened to like Pandora somewhere in the app. Currently I have to search and scroll every time to nearly the bottom of the library to find my Workout playlist which I use religiously at the gym.
koheripbal 6y ago
I don't get the love for video podcasts. I find it far more efficient to just listen while doing something else (such as driving or working at my computer). As long as I can get Rogan on my podcast app, nothing really changes for me.
- cwhiz 6y ago
  To each their own. JRE is the only podcast I watch. You miss detail on his show if you can’t see the discussion. The episodes with Elon Musk come to mind. Seeing his facial expressions and reactions is more powerful than just hearing it. And, obviously, seeing him smoke a blunt was surreal and not something you can capture in an audio feed. My point was that you could enjoy JRE the way you wanted to. Now you’ll have to enjoy it the way Spotify tells you to. As far as I know his episodes will be pulled off other platforms in September.
  - jimmydddd 6y ago
    Agreed. But I did enjoy watching the podcast more when they actually showed the videos they were talking about. Now they still talk about videos, but never show them due to copyright concerns. That can be a bit annoying, although I know it's not JR's fault.
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    I feel like that's one example that everyone cites - sort of proving the rule that 99% of his podcasts can be listened to without missing anything.
    - cwhiz 6y ago
      It’s the most obvious one. But I don’t need to explain myself to you further. I prefer JRE video podcasts.
- chrledntsurf 6y ago
  I would wager most people who watch podcasts on youtube are using it as a second screen while on their phone, tablet, laptop etc

dpweb 6y ago

Stern had bonuses to grow the sirius audience if I remember correctly. Amazing considering Sirius had like 600k subscribers at the time! Stern was at his height in 2001-2004 I think was peaking at 25m listeners in the mornings on terrestrial radio. Which was fucking massive. Dropped off huge on day 1 at Sirius and I don't think ever recovered most of his audience. Interesting that audience size != what's a good deal for the broadcaster. Like music however I suspect the REAL value is in the 'back catalog'.

ramblerman 6y ago
> Like music however I suspect the REAL value is in the 'back catalog'. Really? As a semi frequent JRE listener, if I missed an interesting guest I'll still go back and listen, but I'm not particularly motivated to go and listen to an interview from 1 year ago, or any historical one for that matter. It needs to be current for me, I'm not convinced it has the replayability of music, or a tv show like friends say.
- manigandham 6y ago
  There's a 3rd option between latest vs replay called older episodes you haven't watched yet. He has almost 1500 episodes covering thousands of hours. Many people listen to the back catalog while waiting for the latest episodes or more content from the interesting guests and topics.
- S_A_P 6y ago
  Agreed. Most of what he talks about is timely/topical. I suspect maybe in 5-10 more years it could get interesting again.
- ambicapter 6y ago
  Really? If a guest I'm interested in did an interview two years ago and none since, I don't really have a choice, I'm going to listen to that interview.
- oblio 6y ago
  If Reddit, HN and similar sites are any indication, you're right. Views, clicks, comments, etc., fall of a cliff for content older than N units of time.

lazyant 6y ago

> ... shows the power of independent media Yes, as in "it's possible", the same as it's possible for an unknown author to be a best selling author (like JK Rowling). No as in it's an outlier or the exception. How many cases like this do we have? , esp. considering the consolidation of mass media in a few companies?

Mary-Jane 6y ago
I'm curious what your point is. Do you expect that anyone with a mic ought to be able to experience Rogan's success?
- jeromegv 6y ago
  The point I believe is that you can't say that "independent media" is now such a strong force when the amount of people that have achieved success within that field is incredibly small (compared to existing large media). Can agree or not, but i believe it's the point.
  - cameronbrown 6y ago
    I disagree. There are many YouTube political commentators pulling in more daily views than CNN. Younger people hate the typical mainstream media outlet because they know it's full of propaganda.
    - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
      Does propaganda here mean organized baloney as opposed to individual baloney?
      - cameronbrown 6y ago
        Yes. Someone stating their honest-to-god opinion and how they came to it is not propaganda but organised attempts to push certain narratives are. Individuals can definitely shill for their side, but then they wouldn't be very popular with the audience.

nlh 6y ago

Don’t make too many assumptions about Stern just because he dropped off your radar in ‘06. His show on SiriusXM continues to be renewed (though it might actually end soon - he’s getting exhausted). As of 2015 his contract was worth $80 million PER YEAR and the estimates were that his audience is around 3.5 million highly engaged listeners. Yes, a fraction of what JRE gets in downloads, but hey...$80 million per year. Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/16/business/media/howard-stern-and-siriusxm-reach-new-deal.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/16/business/media/howard-ste...

skohan 6y ago
Not to say that $80 million/3.5 million listeners is anything to scoff at, but it's hard to argue that his cultural significance is vastly diminished. Others have said he was reaching 25 million listeners at his peak so 3.5 million is quite a step down from that. Now that might be just fine for Howard Stern, like it might be just fine for Joe Rogan, but I think it's fairly likely that this kind of deal does come down to trading cultural cache, and one's status as a household name for cold hard cash at the end of the day. In that sense, Rogan's move to spotify might be more like a popular touring act being put to pasture as a headliner in Vegas than it represents him taking on the mantle of mainstream media. I suspect Rogan will see somewhat less of a drop-off than stern since the barrier to entry for Spotify is significantly less than satellite radio, but I suspect we will see that the medium has been a major component of his success: his show is pretty good when it's free and when it's everywhere. In other words, like Howard Stern was the best thing you could find when flipping channels on the way to work, Joe Rogan's content is often worth a click in a sea of mediocre content. Whether people will actively seek it out remains to be seen.
- scarface74 6y ago
  As much as I hate to admit it, I think more casual users use Spotify than use podcasts. Anything that isn’t available in my podcast player is invisible to me personally. But I’m probably in the minority. Just like anything that doesn’t have an RSS feed is invisible to me. But again, I realize that I’m in the minority.

bjourne 6y ago

Undoubtedly that is what will happen with Joe Rogan too. Money talks. PewDiePie went through roughly the same transition.

koheripbal 6y ago
I don't think they are exactly comparable circumstances because podcasts on Spotify are still free, where as Stern made the switch to a paid-platform. In my case, I'll probably stop listening because my specific podcast app (podkicker) doesn't look like it can pull from spotify (maybe none can).

throwawaymsft 6y ago

The long-form format is a huge part. The regular media is not incentivized to air a 3-hour interview with a thoughtful interviewer. No, you'll get a 2-minute clip on CNN designed to extract click-bait soundbites from the guest.