With all the news of possible re-openings across the country, lost in the news shuffle was a very lucrative business deal that could change the game of podcasting and video sharing for years to come.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Tuesday that stand-up comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan is taking his "Joe Rogan Experience" (JRE) podcast and moving it exclusively to the audio streaming service Spotify by the end of the year. The 52-year-old Rogan and Spotify Technologies reached a "multi-year" deal worth "worth more than" $100 million.
Rogan confirmed the deal on his Podcast:
Here's part of what Rogan said above:
It will be the exact same show. I am not going to be an employee of Spotify. We're going to be working with the same crew, doing the exact same show. The only difference be it will now be available on the largest audio platform in the world. Nothing else will change. It will be free. It'll be free to you. You just have to go to Spotify to get it.
This could be a game changing moment in the podcast and video sharing game.
As part of the deal, Rogan will be taking his show's entire backlog of full podcasts - including video - to Spotify's platform. That means that every single one of the full episodes of the "Joe Rogan Experience" will no longer be available on YouTube by the end of the year. Rogan is a beast on YouTube, with his PowerfulJRE channel being one of the video platform's biggest draws. It's not clear at this time if Rogan's other YouTube channel, JRE Clips, will be removed from YouTube as well.
The move has already been fruitful, not only for Rogan, but definitely for Spotify. From May 19th to now, as of this writing, the price of Spotify stock (SPOT) has gone from $169.35 a share to $194.16. In less than three full days, that means Spotify has seen nearly a 15 percent increase in its market value.