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  • safe 🪩
    Sep 1, 2020
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    edited

    Joe Budden & Spotify

    Someone asked for this and I felt like it would be an interesting topic to cover. There’s not a lot of technical details here but I think I can hopefully give a good overview of what happened between the Joe Budden Podcast and Spotify.

    Everyday Struggle

    We really have to start with Everyday Struggle. The show was a Complex Magazine regular Hip-Hop talk show and it started in April 2017. It originally featured DJ Akademiks, Nadeska Alexis and Joe Budden. The show took off almost immediately with episodes of the show garnering into the millions of views and becoming a staple in the culture. In December 2017, Joe Budden announced he would leave the show. At this point, the Joe Budden Podcast was successful but Everyday Struggle remained his main cultural impact in terms of discussion. In order to understand the Spotify deal we need to look at why he left Everyday Struggle.

    Joe was the creator of Everyday Struggle. While it may have been the combination of himself and AK that led to a lot of its success, Budden ultimately was the creator. In December he wanted to negotiate a new contract. There’s a lot of rumors about this – one of which was that he wanted 4x the salary and 3-5% of Complex. Given Complex’s valuation in 2017 that’s around $7-10m along with whatever the salary was. Again we don’t know how true this was, but what is clear is that Budden wanted a lot more than he was getting.

    Spotify Deal

    Following the failed negotiations around Everyday Struggle, Budden tweeted the following:

    The Joe Budden Podcast already existed but Everyday Struggle had given it a new life and his many fans flocked from Everyday Struggle into his podcast which became his main cultural impact. The podcast continued to grow throughout 2018. In his video on Spotify, Joe talks about how at this point in time, he realized that he was getting offered millions from a number of places. He was getting offered money by Viacom and Revolt and many more companies to work and produce content for them and this money was a lot. Despite this, at the time, his main time sink was the podcast. He realized that despite the podcast being the thing he spent the most time on, it was making him the least return. So, he started to look into monetization options. In August 2018, Spotify, Tidal and several other companies reached out enquiring about the podcast.

    There’s obviously a limited amount of information out there about all of this so I’m largely going off Joe’s word here. He met with Spotify and they laid out their plan for podcasting and as he said, it aligned very closely with how he saw the industry in the future. He signed a 2-year deal with Spotify in August and said that at the time he knew they didn’t know how to value his brand. He wasn’t sure either and the Spotify deal would give him the opportunity to see how the market developed and to see what value he was bringing – part of the reason he chose Spotify was that he would be able to have people look at the a***ytics and value it. The deal was a licensing deal exclusively centered around the podcast – not allowing Spotify to cut into merch and the like. It didn’t require ad placements – something Budden is generally against – but it did allow Spotify to take a cut of the touring in exchange for promotion and assistance. Episodes would now happen twice weekly and Spotify would have them exclusively for a period before they became available on Youtube. Budden says at this point Apple had the marketshare but weren’t capitalizing – the vast majority of podcast listeners were just using the Apple Podcasts app. Spotify told Joe that if they could even cut into a few percent of the market share that would be incredible.

    During the Deal

    Spotify launched the Joe Budden Podcast in September 2018. It immediately topped their podcast charts. Budden says that from Day 1 it was incredibly apparent that they had been undervalued. This began the tension between Spotify and Joe. He viewed it as being a situation where, while he would honor the contract, he felt that Spotify from early stages should have renegotiated.

    A few months later Spotify purchased two podcast networks, Gimlet and Anchor. The overall deal for the two companies was over $300m. Despite this, Joe Budden Podcast remained the top podcast on Spotify.

    8 months into the deal, Spotify asked to renegotiate the contract. This was exactly what Budden had wanted. But the deal that Spotify offered was a 360 contract. He admitted it was plenty of money but it would allow Spotify to own the podcast and not just the podcast – it would allow them to take a cut of albums, of merchandise, of touring. Basically anything members of the Joe Budden podcast did, Spotify would take a cut. To Budden, this was disrespectful. He was undervalued from the start and the Gimlet and Anchor acquisitions were enormous but yet Spotify when trying to keep him on their service were still trying to screw him with a 360 contract.

  • safe 🪩
    OP
    Sep 1, 2020

    A year into the deal, Budden wanted a raise. Spotify didn’t offer one so he asked them and was given figures to suggest they weren’t deserving of a raise. As he said “how can we be the #1 podcast for a year, outperforming their multi-millionaire companies and not get a raise”.

    In December 2019, Budden wanted to negotiate a vacation for himself and his team so that they could have Christmas and New Years off. Spotify were not on board. They did however offer them Rolexes, as a reward for their success. While Joe said they love watches, in some ways he suggested this was a slight as he’d watched white creators get enormous amounts of money in acquisitions and they got offered watches despite being #1. Not only that but Spotify said no to the watches they picked out – despite them saying they would be more than happy with used watches. Spotify countered by offering a trip to Greece and then later retracting it. Budden then asked them their budget and suggested they could give it away to the fans – it would get them promotion and they could give back. Spotify again rejected the proposal.

    In February 2020, Spotify purchased The Ringer for $200m. At this point in time the pandemic was hitting and Budden’s father was in grave health. They asked for time out to deal with the pandemic and Spotify agreed. Joe Budden then said he received a call from Bill Simmons asking him to pre-record podcasts and offering to help despite Joe telling him his father was dying. Again, Spotify were trying to maximize return and were using Bill Simmons to try and communicate with Joe which went down badly.

  • safe 🪩
    OP
    Sep 1, 2020

    End of the Contract

    Here we are at the present day. Spotify offered Joe a contract again and he refused. We don’t really know anything more despite the rumors going around. According to Joe the contract remains on the table. As of now negotiations and discussions are still happening about the future of the podcast.

    My Take:

    Hopefully this provides a bit of context but I want to give my take.

    Joe Budden cares a lot. He cares a lot about fairness, he cares about being compensated right and getting his credit and he cares a lot about freedom. He also has an immense amount of pride. These can be to a fault. He knows how predatory the music industry can be and he wants to do his part in stopping that from happening in the podcast space.

    Spotify are a corporation. They have a difficult task of competing with Apple in the music streaming market and they’re looking for ways to expand. Podcasting made sense and the Joe Budden Podcast acted as a test for them of the market and they then went after bigger fish like The Ringer and Joe Rogan. The Joe Budden Podcast has a primarily music listener audience and likely will help in taking market share from Apple but does little to attract users who don’t already use a streaming service. Budden is unwilling to compromise, he’s unwilling to run ads and he is only one podcast that who knows how long it will survive. A***ytics may suggest they don’t drive much value.

  • safe 🪩
    OP
    Sep 1, 2020
    ·
    1 reply

    That being said I believe Joe is largely in the right here. Was he stubborn and asking for more than hes worth? Most likely. But the fact that he has remained one of the biggest podcasts on the network despite the acquisition of some of the biggest podcast networks on Earth is proof that Spotify should be giving him what he wants. They have overpaid multiple networks of podcasts but won’t overpay a small podcast that is generating massive return.



    There’s a lot of intricacy and we don’t know the whole story but Budden represents a Black voice in a Black culture that has been dominated by white voices since the advent of the internet. He’s stubborn, he’s probably difficult to work with, he probably overvalues himself BUT I strongly believe that he should be supported and that he represents someone who is willing to turn down massive amounts of money in order to maintain freedom for himself and for others in the future and that alone is worth commending.

    I highly recommend the episode linked above for hearing a take from Joe on this. There's really not a lot here at all that isn't covered in the podcast in some way.

  • Sep 1, 2020

    in on another safe thread

  • Sep 1, 2020

    Joe budden more like joe poopin

  • Sep 1, 2020
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    2 replies

    lmao who specifically asked for this safe?

  • Sep 1, 2020
    Mar

    lmao who specifically asked for this safe?

  • Sep 1, 2020

    In on another safe classic

  • Sep 1, 2020

    IN

  • safe 🪩
    OP
    Sep 1, 2020
    ·
    2 replies
    Mar

    lmao who specifically asked for this safe?

    I cant remember and I cant go back far enough in notifications to find it lmao

    might be in one of the Budden Spotify threads if you wanna find it but im just hoping they'll see this post cause I cant remember their @

  • Sep 1, 2020
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    2 replies

    Not as interested in Joe Budden drama but will read cause its @safe

  • Sep 1, 2020
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    1 reply

    what a crazy time to drop this thread after the tahiry interview

  • safe 🪩
    OP
    Sep 1, 2020
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    1 reply
    Takotchi

    what a crazy time to drop this thread after the tahiry interview

    ?

  • Sep 1, 2020

    You shoulda had one of his crazy fits in op

  • Sep 1, 2020
    safe

    I cant remember and I cant go back far enough in notifications to find it lmao

    might be in one of the Budden Spotify threads if you wanna find it but im just hoping they'll see this post cause I cant remember their @

    they deleted the thread

  • Sep 1, 2020
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    5 replies
    safe

    ?

    tahiry just did a pod talkin bout how joe used to beat her ass

  • safe 🪩
    OP
    Sep 1, 2020
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    2 replies
    Takotchi

    tahiry just did a pod talkin bout how joe used to beat her ass

    yikes

  • safe 🪩
    OP
    Sep 1, 2020
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    edited
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    1 reply

    sorry for @ing all yall in a Joe Budden thread lmao ill make sure the next one is more interesting to a wider group

    also if other people want @s you're just gonna have to post and ask now because theres already so many ppl

  • Sep 1, 2020
    safe
    · edited

    sorry for @​ing all yall in a Joe Budden thread lmao ill make sure the next one is more interesting to a wider group

    also if other people want @​s you're just gonna have to post and ask now because theres already so many ppl

    I forgive you but I am still disappointed

  • Sep 1, 2020

    i am in SAFE thread

  • Sep 1, 2020

  • Sep 1, 2020
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    1 reply

    i remember during 2017 i was really sick and every morning i just wake up and watch the everyday struggle

  • safe 🪩
    OP
    Sep 1, 2020
    EuroNymous

    i remember during 2017 i was really sick and every morning i just wake up and watch the everyday struggle

    s*** really was the culture

  • Sep 1, 2020

    great thread safe