Joe Rogan Just Got Crushed In The Podcast Rankings
The king is knocked from his throne?
Despite never being too far away from a major controversy, Joe Rogan’s podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience is often at the very top of the podcast heap, drawing in huge listening numbers. However, there is a new podcaster in town and Joe Rogan just got crushed in the rankings. According to Deadline, Meghan Markle’s new podcast Archetypes is the most-listened-to-podcast on Spotify in six territories.
The Joe Rogan Experience is the usual US frontrunner for Spotify’s Podcasts, but has been beaten into second place by Markle’s effort, which Forbes describes as challenging “societal gender stereotypes that frequently prevent women from achieving their full potential.” As well as topping the US Spotify Podcast charts, Markle’s new show topped charts in the United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. The first episode debuted on Tuesday, with a special guest, multiple Grand-Slam Tennis champion and all-round GOAT Serena Williams. Archetypes, which invites Mariah Carey as a guest for its next episode, is part of a multi-year deal with Spotify for Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s Archewell Audio enterprise.
Archewell’s deal with Spotify didn’t get off to the best of starts, having only produced one podcast ‘special’ over a year-long period following the announcement of the deal in December 2020 and the reason behind the absence of content can be traced back to Joe Rogan. According to Cosmopolitan, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry had been waiting to see how Spotify would act regarding the hosting of covid-misinformation within its platform, courtesy of podcasts like The Joe Rogan Experience. Joe Rogan courted massive controversy for episodes featuring alleged misinformation regarding Covid and vaccinations, with people calling for the podcast to be pulled from the platform and several high-profile artists seeking to remove their work from Spotify.
With the Joe Rogan Spotify controversy in the rear-view mirror (for now) Meghan Markle has moved ahead with her podcasting venture and the strong numbers of her debut episode should come as no surprise given her celebrity status and that of her guest Serena Williams. One would be forgiven that Joe Rogan’s show took a hit following the Covid misinformation debacle, but the fact that it was only beaten into second place on Spotify’s US charts shows that it has major staying power. Rogan is even said to have gained millions of new subscribers thanks to the controversy, as well as seeing a potential uptick in his overall net worth, proving there is no such thing as bad press.
It will be interesting to see whether Meghan Markle can keep pace with the media behemoth that is Joe Rogan over the coming weeks, or whether the debut episode of Archetypes attracted huge listening figures due to novelty. There is no way of knowing whether Markle’s work can keep pace, but it would appear pretty cut and dry that Joe Rogan will always rise to the top, no matter what he says or does, which is an incredibly powerful position to hold. Meghan Markle’s Archetypes is set to be released weekly on Spotify on Tuesdays, produced by Archewell Audio in conjunction with Spotify’s Gimlet Media.
