Spotify’s head of podcast innovation and monetization, Bill Simons, called Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, “scammers” after they terminated the contract signed in 2020 between the platform and the couple to do a podcast on the platform titled Archetypes. Harry and Meghan had to receive about 20 million dollars for their work, but the agreement has ended much earlier than expected: only 12 episodes have been produced.
Simons’s criticism came after the music platform and Archewell Audio, the Sussex company, reported in a joint statement that they had “mutually agreed to separate and are proud of the series we did together.” However, sources Spotify’s close associates indicated that the prince and duchess did not meet the required productivity in the contract to receive full payment, according to The Wall Street Journal.
In his own podcast, Simons lashed out at the royal couple. “I wish I had been involved in the ‘Meghan and Harry leave Spotify: Los Malditos Estafiadores’ negotiation.’ That is the podcast we should have launched with them,” he expressed. In addition, he added that he should explain the story of the conversation he had with the prince over Zoom “to try to help him with a podcast idea.” “It’s one of my best stories…Fuck ’em. Scammers ”, he added.
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek acknowledged in early 2023 that mistakes made in the effort to land key figures for podcasts had cost the company $1 billion. After the success of the controversial Joe Rogan show, the platform wanted to repeat the formula by producing original podcasts through its own studios. But none worked, and he had to lay off 200 employees from his podcast division.
With the intention of leading the industry in 2022, they bought Podsights and Chartable, two platforms that allow content creators to include tags in their programs that are later used to track which users listened to them, if they heard an ad, and if they later made any action.
Also in 2022 Spotify registered a net loss of 430 million euros and the first quarter of 2023 they lost 225 million more. Consequently, they announced a 6% reduction in their staff last January, and on June 5 they announced the layoff of 200 employees from the podcast division. That is, 2% of its workforce.
Beyond reducing the workforce, Ek announced other measures to alleviate the situation. Going forward, they will be “very diligent in how we invest in future content deals,” noting that podcasts that don’t work won’t get renewed. Those that do work, on the other hand, will be analyzed “case by case based on relative value,” he specified.
