Anyone with even a passing awareness of Joe Rogan knows that the reach of his podcasting kingdom extends far beyond that of most of his rivals. There must be a reason Spotify is willing to shell out eye-popping sums to keep him happy, after all. But a sense of exactly how big his audience is has long been unclear—until Thursday, that is, when Bloomberg News’ Ashley Carman reported on a new Spotify feature that reveals podcast follower counts. Not only does the unnamed feature show that The Joe Rogan Experiencehas 14.5 million followers, making it the most popular podcast on the platform; it also betrays that his next-closest competitor, TED Talks Daily, has a following that’s almost three times smaller, with a mere five million. Other popular podcasts like Call Her Daddyand The New York Times’ The Dailyboast even more trifling numbers, with counts of 3.7 million and 2.6 million, respectively. And those are just the numbers Rogan is putting up on Spotify. Last month, The Wall Street Journal reported that the platform had signed a multiyear deal with its biggest cash cow that will see it distribute his show to other podcast platforms, including YouTube. The deal is reportedly worth as much as $250 million.
