businessinsider | Vanity Fair, which first reported on the Obamas' dissatisfaction with Spotify, noted that they are most interested in producing shows featuring fresh voices.
Spotify has spent well over $1 billion to diversify beyond music content and into the broader audio market, scooping up podcast studios like Gimlet Media and The Ringer and signing exclusive deals with talent including Rogan and Dax Shepard.
A big piece of its strategy has been to ink development deals with bold-faced names like the Obamas and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, who have yet to produce a show for Spotify outside of a 2020 holiday special.
So far, the strategy appears to have worked. Spotify said in October, citing third-party data from Edison Research, that it now ranks ahead of Apple Podcasts as the most popular podcast app in the US.
But there have also been challenges, including a cultural reckoning within Gimlet Media linked to its popluar"Reply All" podcast as well as the shuttering of Spotify's in-house podcast studio, known internally as Studio 4. More recently, the Rogan controversy has led some Spotify podcasters to call out the company.
Brené Brown, for instance, said she would take a pause from producing new episodes as she sought to "better understand the organization's misinformation policy," and Wendy Zukerman, host of Gimlet show "Science Vs." said she would stop making new episodes of the show except to counteract misinformation on the platform.
The Obamas' podcasting deal with Spotify followed their initial move into entertainment one year earlier, when they announced the formation of Higher Ground and its multi-year film and TV deal with Netflix . They are behind the streamer's Oscar-winning documentary "American Factory" and Kevin Hart drama "Fatherhood," among other projects.
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