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I wonder how those losing their jobs feel about Spotify's reported $200 million investment in Joe Rogan now.
by mvdtnz 3y ago
I wonder how those losing their jobs feel about Spotify's reported $200 million investment in Joe Rogan now.
- anon23432343 3y agoIt was and still is a stupid decision to buy Joe Rogan. I don't get why people listen to him... He is not funny nor smart. It sometimes feels you get better value when watching morning tv shows...
- HideousKojima 3y ago>It was and still is a stupid decision to buy Joe Rogan. >I don't get why people listen to him... I think you just contradicted yourself here. Whether or not it was a stupid decision to buy the rights to his podcast is orthogonal to whether or not he's funny or smart or if his content gives "value" to listeners.
- 10u152 3y agoYou don’t listen to Joe Rogan to listen to Joe Rogan. You listen because he has the most interesting guests on.
- anon23432343 3y agoAnd lets people spread fake news and stupid theories. Just because they are "interesting" they should not get a free promo.
- rowanG077 3y agoThat's precisely what people like about it. Anyone can come on his show. No matter how batshit crazy. Many people don't want to be coddled and protected from viewpoints other people have decided are fake news or stupid. They can make up the balance themselves.
- kvetching 3y agoThat's your opinion. Most guests have a wealth of knowledge that shouldn't be discounted outright.
- asynchronous 3y ago“But but misinfo!” Man I hate where we’re at for free speech in the West.
- 10u152 3y agoWho defines what's "Fake"? Who defines what's stupid?
- eddtries 3y agoI love it when people parrot what they heard - what misinformation? Do you mean the Robert Kennedy stuff? I can have my own strong views that the vaccines were useful and still enjoy content - if you just consume what you hear and relay it of course you shouldn't be around "fake news and stupid theories". Saying that 99% of Rogans podcasts are not like this.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoJoe Rogan isn't an insightful, active listener like Charlie Rose was and with actual interesting guests at a higher signal level.
- mvdtnz 3y agoI 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.
- bluescrn 3y ago‘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?
- Shish2k 3y agoSpotify 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?
- bluescrn 3y agoElon paid vastly more for Twitter, seemingly primarily as an act of activism. In this incredibly divided world, politics has started to come before profit.
- Shish2k 3y agoAnd 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?
- rickdeckard 3y agoIt 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-subscriptions-no-creator-fees-until-2023-1234961186/ https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/spotify-podcast-subscr...
- baby 3y agoHe’s a great podcaster.
- epistasis 3y agoGood enough to bring in $200M of revenue through subscriptions or ads?
- rapsey 3y agoUnless Spotify releases numbers none of us have a clue. Considering his youtube numbers before the move, that number was actually him selling himself short.
- rowanG077 3y agoBy definition he is since that is what spotify paid now.
- anthonypasq 3y agothat wasnt the purpose of buying him. the purpose was to buy a gigantic audience of listeners that would hopefully now use spotify as their main podcast app
- baby 3y agoyes that's his valuation since that's what Spotify paid.
- kvetching 3y agoHe's really gone downhill lately. Looking really rough. And stoned on top of that. I wonder if he can even comprehend half of what his guests are saying.
- baby 3y agoNa he is still great
- Shish2k 3y agoAre “it was a stupid decision to buy him” and “I don't get why people listen to him” supposed to be related statements? The business decision isn’t about your personal feelings, it’s about his objectively measurably enormous audience
- anon23432343 3y agoI want to see how they got the 200 million back and as they have to lay off 17% of there people it looks like a stupid decision in the end.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rickdeckard 3y agoIt's a ridiculous amount of money for that content. But looking back at those days where all platform embraced a strategy to "own ALL content", I doubt that the 2nd-best offer was significantly less. After all, they also paid him to NOT make any further money with the podcast on YouTube or other platforms...
- lotsofpulp 3y ago> But looking back at those days where all platform embraced a strategy to "own ALL content", I don’t understand how that could have ever been a strategy without buying the businesses that own most of the popular music, such as Warner, Universal, and Sony.
- rickdeckard 3y agoSpotify is largely owned by those businesses, that was part of the deal to get them to even open their catalog
- lotsofpulp 3y agoThat is not true. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SPOT/holders/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SPOT/holders/ Any ownership by the record labels must be less than 1%.
- Roritharr 3y agoWould you say that about any other type of media/culture/art you dislike? "I don't get why people like the Mona Lisa, the painting is neither original nor particularly well done" Is just as much a subjective statement. JRE is, by most released figures the top interview podcast on the planet, his interviews regularly move Charts of third party media like Book Bestseller Lists and Music Charts. There obviously is a huge audience and value there and I can only assume their agreement over 200M was based on some pretty solid math.
- coryrc 3y ago> I can only assume their agreement over 200M was based on some pretty solid math. Working at Microsoft during the Ballmer era and seeing the number of multi-billion-dollar acquisitions written-down to nothing, I would never assume corporations spend large amounts wisely.
- Roritharr 3y agoYou certainly have a point there, but I also remember being absolutely wrong about the Minecraft aquisition which has now paid for itself multiple times. Your math doesn't have to work out, even if it's solid.
- mewpmewp2 3y agoSometimes it's the case that you do 10 investments, each $1b where one makes you $100b. But in hindsight the 9 looked stupid, but at the time you were using the same strategy to do all the 10 investments. Not sure if it's case with Joe Rogan, but just how sometimes there's a lot of failure, while the strategy itself is solid.
- walteweiss 3y agoI will never understand why that idiot was hired as a CEO in the first place.
- xdennis 3y agoI think, sometimes, buying the competition and killing it is the intended effect. Especially if you're as anti-competitive as Microsoft.
- stjohnswarts 3y agoIt's simple, different people have different opinions in life and his show is still the most popular podcast on spotify. was it worth $200 million, I have my doubts on that one.
- rowanG077 3y agoYou don't watch Joe Rogan for Joe Rogan. You watch Joe Rogan for the guests. I love his episodes with Elon Musk.
- 1letterunixname 3y ago[flagged]
- eddtries 3y agoIt’s light entertainment and he tends to cover topics I am interested in like BJJ/Muay Thai. If he goes on about Covid etc I just half listen, it’s rarely that long.
- andsoitis 3y ago> I don't get why people listen to him... People have different tastes. That's OK. The Joe Rogan Experience has continued to be at the top of Spotify's podcast charts, bringing in 11m listeners an episode. https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/07/03/top-podcasts-2023-joe-rogan-tops-crime-junkie-and-the-daily/?sh=690804e64ccf https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/07/03/top-pod...
- Solvency 3y ago[flagged]
- baby 3y agoI feel like you’re implying something but I don’t get it.
- mvdtnz 3y agoTo spell it out for you, $200 million could pay for well over 1,000 employee-years of salaries.
- School-Cotton 3y agoCompanies exist to make money, not to be a charity for their employees.
- soderfoo 3y agoI get what you are saying but you would be surprised how fast financial forecasts balloon at scale. 200 developers @ $150k a year = $30M $200M/$30M = 6.5 years
- whiddershins 3y agoIt’s also not $150k/year. Employees cost far more than their salary.
- AdamN 3y agoRule of thumb is double. So if you're average total comp is $150k then total cost for each of those employees is $300k/employee (office, expenses, HVAC, insurance, etc..)
- SkyPuncher 3y agoI think you’re both saying the same thing. Op is saying 1 employee for 1 year is “1 employee-year”.
- baby 3y agoSo you're saying companies shouldn't do acquisitions?
- rapsey 3y agoWe will find out soon enough because his contract is running out.
- loandbehold 3y agoJoe Rogan brings in 10s millions of listeners. On the other hand it's not clear what value those employees who were let go brought. The software behind Spotify is pretty generic. Listening experience isn't much different between say Spotify,YouTube Music and Amazon Music. Software engineers might not want to hear it, but content is more important than software used to consume it. Book vs book's cover.
- mvdtnz 3y ago> Joe Rogan brings in 10s millions of listeners Has this ever been confirmed by Spotify?
- epistasis 3y agoWhat revenue do these listeners bring?
- loandbehold 3y agoSpotify makes money through ads for non-paying users and subscription fees from paying users. For non-paying users, time listened translates into ad impressions. New content also brings in new paid subscribers, as it makes subscription more valuable to the user allowing listening without ads.
- whiddershins 3y agoAlso, even when you pay, Rogan still has ads.
- o-alex 3y agoA more suitable comparison would be between the book contents and the paper and fonts of the text. I don't know how much you would enjoy a book on bad paper and bad, barely legible text.
- loandbehold 3y agoYes, but printing book legibly is a solved problem. So all books in the bookstore are legible. Books are competing on content, not legibility.
- kevinmchugh 3y agoMany of them probably came in during the same growth wave: > In 2020 and 2021, we took advantage of the opportunity presented by lower-cost capital and invested significantly in team expansion, content enhancement, marketing, and new verticals There's no details here about which teams are effected. I imagine there's many old hands who see this as the inevitable end of an unnecessary conquer-the-world attempt
- danwee 3y ago[flagged]
- epistasis 3y agoBecause of money? Quite the opposite, the problem is that Spotify is not making enough money. I think Rogan was paid a ridiculous amount of money due to fantasies of some executives, maybe influenced by bad politics or something.
- danwee 3y agoI guess I wanted to say "because of the promise of money"
- ted_bunny 3y agoWhat about his resume disqualifies him from shooting the shit on a microphone?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bede 3y agoAs a scientist working in public health, this decision burned my faith in Spotify. They were taking down conspiracy theory podcasts daily while bankrolling Rogan to provide a platform with insane reach for cranks like Robert Malone. I cancelled my subscription for a few months in protest.
- massysett 3y ago"for a few months" - so you went back. Honest question - what is Spotify doing so well that you went back rather than just sticking with, say, Apple Music?
- bede 3y agoDepth and breadth of electronic music catalogue and switching cost. Former is probably narrowing rapidly. What would you recommend? Building Apple's future streaming monopoly isn't particularly appealing. Small perhaps, but pausing a sub with explanation sends a clear signal.
- massysett 3y agoI use a lot of Apple devices and I’m not picky, so Apple Music works well for me. I highly doubt Apple will get a monopoly since Google is also in this space with YouTube Music, so there’s another option for you. A lot of the smaller players have dropped out of this space, which might be a hint as to why Spotify is leaning in to the podcasts: maybe it’s hard to be independent here with Amazon, Apple, and Google being willing to not make much money on this as they build their moats.
- bede 3y agoThanks!
- coldpie 3y ago> for a few months Heh. There's a zillion perfectly good competitors in this space. Why not just permanently switch to one that doesn't fund conspiracy theory wackos?
- TMWNN 3y agoAssuming that investing in Rogan did what Spotify hoped it would (driving enough subscriptions to make a profit), not having made the investment would have meant more layoffs now.
- jzb 3y agoOpposite for me. I cancelled because of that. Partially because I didn’t like Spotify endorsing his content, but also because I subscribed to Spotify for music, not podcasts. I wanted to see them invest more in features around music and work on better compensation for artists - not spend my subscription money on shoving podcast content at me.
- slig 3y agoI wonder why they force podcasts so much. I've never listened to them, and I'm sure they have that data, and the recommendations are way, way off anything I'd consider listening to.
- rightbyte 3y agoI guess they try to force it because they have higher margins on them. Podcast are cheaper to produce and requires no record label sharing the profits with Spotify.
- CSMastermind 3y agoProbably the same reason they're pushing so hard into audiobooks right now. They want to be a general audio platform instead of a music platform and there are significant network effects if they can pull it off which ultimately means more customers and a more sticky product.
- jzb 3y agoIf they produce the podcast they don't have to pay royalties + they've aimed for exclusivity with them. They aren't going to have exclusivity with most music, so podcasts are an opportunity to bring in a new audience and lock them in. That's, AIUI, the theory. Whether it works in practice is another story.
- yourusername 3y agoAt least Rogan is still one of the most popular podcasters in the world. They paid a similar ammount for Gimlet and that company is now completely defunct and all their hit podcasts either jumped ship or stopped. So that was probably a worse investment.
- andsoitis 3y agoThe Joe Rogan Experience has continued to be at the top of Spotify's podcast charts in 2023. It has the biggest weekly audience in the US (Edison Research) and is estimated to bring in 11 million listeners per episode. It is also the top podcast worldwide on Spotify. Second place goes to Crime Junkie, which has half the listener numbers. Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/07/03/top-podcasts-2023-joe-rogan-tops-crime-junkie-and-the-daily/?sh=690804e64ccf https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/07/03/top-pod...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]