Spotify’s head of podcast innovation and monetisation has labelled Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex “grifters” after their $20m, multi-year deal to make podcasts with the streaming platform came to an end after they made just 12 episodes.
Ringer podcast network founder Bill Simmons – who sold his company to Spotify for $196m in 2020 and gained a leadership role at the company in the deal – criticised Harry and Meghan on his own podcast, following the announcement that the Sussexes’ audio production company, Archewell, had severed ties with Spotify. The couple signed a $20m deal with Spotify in 2020.
The Archetypes podcast, which was hosted by Meghan, featured conversations with friends and celebrities including Serena Williams, Mariah Carey and Trevor Noah. It topped the podcast charts for Spotify in a number of markets, but only 12 episodes were made.
Last week, Spotify and Archewell Audio released a joint statement saying they had “mutually agreed to part ways and are proud of the series we made together”. However, sources close to Spotify have said the royal couple did not meet the productivity benchmark required to receive the full headline payout from the deal, having only produced one 12-episode series, the Wall Street Journal reported.
“I wish I had been involved in the ‘Meghan and Harry leave Spotify’ negotiation. ‘The Fucking Grifters.’ That’s the podcast we should have launched with them,” Simmons said on his podcast, the Bill Simmons podcast. “I have got to get drunk one night and tell the story of the Zoom I had with Harry to try and help him with a podcast idea. It’s one of my best stories … Fuck them. The grifters.”
The Guardian has approached Archewell for comment.
Simmons had previously said he was annoyed he had to “share” Spotify with Prince Harry.
In a January 2022 episode of his podcast, he said: “You live in fucking Montecito and you just sell documentaries and podcasts and nobody cares what you have to say about anything unless you talk about the royal family and you just complain about them.”
Spotify’s deals with Simmons and the Duke and Duchess were a part of the company’s expansion into podcasting, after its success with Joe Rogan. However, the Stockholm-based streaming company is now facing investor pressure to improve its performance after making a net loss of €430m (£367m) last year.
Earlier this year, Spotify chief executive Daniel Ek admitted that the company had made some mistakes with the $1bn spent in its push to establish itself as a key player in podcasting.
“You’re right in calling out the overpaying and overinvesting,” he told financial analysts on a conference call.
“We’re going to be very diligent in how we invest in future content deals,” he added. “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.”
Earlier this month, Spotify announced it would be making 200 job cuts in its podcasting business.