![]() First announced in late 2020, the Archewell deal was Spotify’s coup de grâce in an era when the company was burning through gobs of money to secure a bevy of megadeals with high-profile celebrity talent that possess little to no experience behind the mic - a barnstorming initiative that didn’t end up resulting in very much for the most part. The Archewell stuff is a spectacle, but the couple’s lack of productivity doesn’t appear to be all that atypical when it comes to the audio-streaming platform’s celebrity deals. The Swedish audio-streaming platform is at least equally responsible for its own mess. And it’s worth pointing out, at least with respect to the Spotify deal, it generally takes two to disaster tango. But as scintillating as the floodgates opening up has been, the dirty laundry tends to flow in one direction. ![]() Based on existing reporting, corroborated by what I’ve heard myself from insiders, the gripes about Archewell are more warranted than not. Listen, I don’t have any desire to defend the royals. And, you know, just because you’re famous doesn’t make you great at something.” Well then. Earlier this week, Semafor’s Max Tani got this zinger out of UTA head honcho Jeremy Zimmer at the Cannes Lions advertising festival: “Turns out Meghan Markle was not a great audio talent, or necessarily any kind of talent. Incredibly, “fucking grifters” wasn’t even the most damning put-down to come out of the entire affair. “Fucking grifters.” Simmons had lobbed the sentiment right into the middle of a discussion about Bradley Beal’s trade value, almost as a non sequitur, and as one would expect with any criticism regarding the royals, Simmons’s quote drove an avalanche of headlines, which additionally resulted in a British tabloid hounding the dude in a nondescript downtown L.A. “I wish I had been involved in the ‘Meghan and Harry leave Spotify’ negotiations,” said the podcast host and Spotify executive on a recent episode of his eponymous show. There are oodles of fascinating details to this story, and the part I’m still trying to wrap my head around is the bonkers Bill Simmons subplot. The Spotify breakup might have gotten the bulk of the attention in this press, but as the Journal reports, the situation appears to be more widespread: Their Netflix deal is now also said to be in peril. The Wall Street Journal has been killing on this particular beat: After breaking the news that Spotify will not be renewing its reportedly $20 million-plus deal with the duo’s podcast shingle Archewell Audio, the paper published a larger follow-up that painted a picture of the royals as two people who neglected to do very much to fulfill the several lucrative media contracts that have also made them very rich. We do love a good disaster, and the very public dissolution of Spotify’s business relationship with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry certainly delivered. Last year the No 1 most streamed artist on the platform globally was Bad Bunny, followed by Taylor Swift, Drake, The Weeknd and BTS.Photo-Illustration: Vulture. “Over the last few months we’ve made a considerable effort to rein in costs, but it simply hasn’t been enough,” Ek wrote.Īmazon, Microsoft, Facebook parent Meta, Google’s owner, Alphabet, and the business software company Salesforce have all announced significant job cuts recently, citing an uncertain economic environment and overexpansion under Covid restrictions when there was a boom in demand for tech-related products and services. The company makes money from its premium service, which accounts for about 85% of its revenue, with the rest coming from its ad-supported service. Spotify’s operating expenditure grew at twice the speed of its revenue last year, Ek wrote, as the Stockholm-based company invested heavily in its podcast business. “In hindsight, I was too ambitious in investing ahead of our revenue growth.” “Like many other leaders, I hoped to sustain the strong tailwinds from the pandemic and believed that our broad global business and lower risk to the impact of a slowdown in ads would insulate us,” he wrote.
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