The Obamas Are Reportedly Leaving Spotify
Michelle and Barack Obama may end their exclusive podcast partnership with Spotify.
According to Bloomberg, the former first family's production company, Higher Ground, is in talks with other distributors, including Amazon's Audible and iHeartMedia, about a deal potentially worth tens of millions of dollars. Neither Spotify nor Higher Ground Productions immediately responded to PCMag's request for comment.
Higher Ground Productions, which launched in 2018 with a multi-year Netflix agreement and later teamed up with Spotify for exclusive audiocasts, wants to ink a deal that would allow it to simultaneously release several shows on multiple platforms.
As Bloomberg explained, when platforms like Spotify know a widely released show will end up on their service anyway; they'd rather have exclusive rights to promote their own content. Plus, the Obamas are each willing to appear in a limited, eight-episode show—too short of a commitment for some bidders, which prefer weekly or more long-term programming.
A February article by Vanity Fair tells of friction between Higher Ground and Spotify, "finding it difficult to get additional shows off the ground." Meanwhile, recent controversy over Spotify's flagship podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, may be part of the reason why the Obamas are looking elsewhere, particularly as Barack Obama makes a very public push against disinformation on social media.
The former US president is set to give a speech today at Stanford University's Cyber Policy Center "about changes in the way we create and consume information, and the very real threat it poses to democracy," he writes in a Medium post. "I’ve been reading up on this issue, sitting down with academics, researchers, industry leaders and
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