UFC color commentator Joe Rogan has signed an astronomical deal to take his wildly popular JRE podcast exclusively to Spotify by the end of the year.
The Wall Street Journal cites a source as saying that the deal will be worth in excess of a staggering $100 million for what is currently the No.1 podcast in the world with over 190 million downloads per month.
According to Rogan himself the podcast itself will remain exactly the same as it always has been with his usual small crew of people running it, but that from September 1st it will become available on Spotify.
Then, by the end of the year both old and new editions of the show will only be available on the streaming platform in both audio and video format, meaning that it will be taken off other sites like YouTube.
Rogan was keen to stress that the show will remain free for listeners, though to do so they will either have to sign up for the free version of Spotify, or subscribe to get the ad-free version of the site.
It’s believed that the exclusive deal is only for full episodes of the podcast, which means that the short highlights such as ‘JRE Clips’ will remain on YouTube.
News of Spotify’s acquisition of Rogan’s podcast sent there shares skyrocketing by more than 8%.
