The former US presidential couple, the Obamas, will not be renewing their agreement with the audio streaming platform, Spotify, and will be signing with a new provider.
The news broke out after a report from Bloomberg, which points out that there was a disagreement between the two parties, Spotify and Higher Ground Productions, the company in charge of the Obama’s media productions. The report states that, “…the company is instead talking to other distributors about a deal worth tens of millions of dollars, among the most-lucrative in the podcasting business.”
The Obamas are now in discussions with several others audio streaming services such as Amazon’s Audible and iHeart Media to move to their platforms. One of their major issues that they had with Spotify was that they wanted to create multiple shows and release them on all platforms at the same time, something that went against the rules of the audio service provider, which opts for exclusivity.
This is not the first time that Spotify has come under fire in recent times, as the platform was recently forced to deal with the Joe Rogan issue, with the podcast host having some extremely controversial opinions regarding COVID-19 vaccinations. That resulted in many popular artists, such as Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, separating themselves from Spotify as a form of protest.
It remains unclear if the Obama’s decision had anything to do with the Rogan incident.
