Polarising comedian Joe Rogan is the unofficial king of (controversial) commentary. His popular podcast The Joe Rogan Experience has seen him interview a slew of A-list celebs, from Kanye West to Mike Tyson. However, since he switched his The Joe Rogan Experience episodes from YouTube to Spotify in an exclusive deal, fans are questioning whether the shift has affected Rogan’s influence.

A fan took to Twitter with a Tweet that has ignited a conversation around whether the switch has impacted his relevance.

“Just realized that I haven’t heard a single Joe Rogan episode since he went exclusive to Spotify. I wonder what effect that has had on his audience… Am I in a tiny tiny minority, or is this more widespread? If it is, will it make it harder to get big stars to go exclusive?” She posted.

The replies on her Tweet seem to suggest that many fans agree with the original post and are saying that they didn’t miss him as much as they expected.

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“Reminds me of when Howard Stern went to Sirius in 2004. For a lot [of] people he simply disappeared, and they didn’t miss him as much as they thought they would. His audience shrunk and his net worth expanded. Traded cultural relevance for life-altering wealth,” one fan replied.

“Every time either I moved, or a radio host moved… Imus, Art Bell, several others… I thought they were critical to my media life and I’d be jonesing without them but I forgot about them in 48 hours,” said another.

Of course, the move from free streaming on YouTube to an exclusive deal with Spotify, doesn’t come without considerable financial compensation. In fact, according to Wall Street Journal, Rogan earned $100 million from the Spotify licensing deal for his podcasts. However nice the financial implications are, it does beg the question of whether the successful comedian has sold out by shifting his catalogue.

Despite the huge amount of money Rogan made from the deal, the original poster also bought integrity into the equation.

“Guys like him care first and foremost about reach and relevance and about the love of their audience, and it’s not like he wasn’t already making tens of millions and couldn’t have made more by having subscriptions on top of the ads,” she also posted on Twitter.

There has been no data released by either Rogan or Spotify about how many streams his podcasts have received since joining the music platform, and that information can only be accessed by the creator. However, Spotify has shared that The Joe Rogan Experience was the most popular podcast on Spotify in 2020.

You can read the entire thread here.

You can read more about this topic over at the Comedy Observer.

Stream The Joe Rogan Experience on Spotify below:

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