Spotify and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle severed ties this week, after three years, $20 million, and only 13 episodes of content. Other than the seemingly obvious, what went wrong here?
Spotify, according to The Sun, is looking to drop any content that isn’t meeting audience demands. The company’s CEO Daniel Ek admitted that it is “overpaying and overinvesting,” and Harry and Meghan seem to have met the same fate as Michelle Obama, whose podcast was dropped last year because it wasn’t garnering enough listeners.
“We’re going to be very diligent in how we invest in future content deals,” Ek told BBC. “And the ones that aren’t performing, obviously, we won’t renew. And the ones that are performing, we will obviously look at those on a case-by-case basis on the relative value.”
This comes as rumors emerge that Harry and Meghan’s multimillion-dollar deal with Netflix might also be in jeopardy. While last year’s Harry & Meghan docuseries was the most watched subscription TV show of 2022, there are apparently no plans for a follow-up series, and Netflix is unlikely to renew the couple’s contract. “There is a less friendly attitude from some at the top,” a source says. “The feeling is that the lemon has been fully squeezed. The big bucks Harry and Meghan signed on for do not exist today.”
That deal, also brokered in 2020, was worth a reported $100 million.
