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Jemele Hill is pressuring Spotify to pay a black podcaster $100 million.
In an interview with the New York Times, Hill challenged Spotify, her unique podcast streamer, to show it’s not racist by matching its funding in Rogan with a black host.
“What I would like to see,” Hill stated within the interview, “is for [Spotify] to hand $100 million to somebody who is black.”
(Note: In the identical report, the Times revealed Spotify can pay Rogan $200 million over three and a half years — not $100 million, as beforehand reported. Hill was unaware of this quantity.)
So Hill needs Spotify to pay somebody $100 million for being black and a podcaster. That’s it. Those are the one two {qualifications}.
Hill’s demand exemplifies the issue with a racially-obsessed worldview. Hill cries racism every time there’s a profitable white one that doesn’t have a black counterpart. However, the highest people of any discipline, whether or not white or black, virtually by no means have an equal. They’re on the prime as a result of they haven’t any equal.
No white particular person can command as a lot cash on morning tv as Robin Roberts, there isn’t a black radio host equal to Howard Stern, and no white athlete is value as a lot to Nike as LeBron James is.
Success is about not race however attain. And in podcasting, Joe Rogan is certainly one of one.
Podcasting is extra of a meritocracy than morning tv, radio and even the NBA. Podcast hosts usually are not part of a tv or radio lineup, so they can’t inherit a base viewers which already watches or listens to a channel, irrespective of the host.
This is why podcasters typically make a proportion of the income that their present generates. For instance, a podcaster would possibly earn 50 p.c of his present’s income, whereas the distributor — say, Westwood One — takes the opposite half.
A podcaster’s value is well measurable: discover the annual revenue and comply with a income break up. In Rogan’s case, Spotify calculated that Rogan was value round $57 million a yr due to:
- JRE’s annual advert gross sales.
- Competing gives from Spotify’s rivals.
- Projected variety of new subscribers he’d appeal to.
- Projected variety of customers who would change from Apple Podcast to Spotify due to JRE’s exclusivity. (Spotify needed to overpay to equal the enjoying discipline with Apple.)
JRE is the most well-liked podcast within the nation. Rogan’s worth is singular, not indicative of the broader podcast market. No one else in podcasting is value that sort of cash.
The overwhelming majority of podcasts generate minimal income, together with Jemele Hill’s. Look on the charts: she by no means ranks within the prime 200. Hardly anybody is aware of Jemele Hill has greater than a Twitter account.
Hill’s podcast might generate — let’s decide a quantity — $500,000 a yr. Thus, if Spotify have been to pay her $100 million over three years to show it’s not racist, it could lose about $98.5 million.
Hill’s problem is absurd. It’s not enlightening, it’s extortion. She’s threatening her personal employer that if it doesn’t overpay a black podcaster instantly, she’s going to attempt to burn the corporate to the bottom with accusations of racism. She’s coming. Watch out.
Put merely, there’s not at present a black podcaster who’s value Joe Rogan cash. Nor is there one other white podcaster value Joe Rogan cash. If there have been, Spotify would gladly cough up the cash and add this different industry-shifting host to its lineup. The income that this different podcaster would generate could be value it.
It would be enterprise malpractice to pay a number, black or white, equal to Rogan. Yet Spotify would possibly do it anyway. The value to guard a corporation from baseless claims of racism is excessive. Perhaps it’s value 9 figures?
Jemele Hill is aware of this. She’s hoping that she will frighten her employer into drastically overpaying her for a podcast nobody needs to listen to.
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