Tucker Carlson has dethroned Joe Rogan to have the most listened-to podcast on Spotify this week.
The Joe Rogan Experience has long been the most listened-to podcast in the world through Spotify, where it arrived in 2020, although specific subscriber numbers were never shared. In February 2024, Rogan inked a new multiyear deal—estimated to be worth up to $250 million—with Spotify that saw the streamer drop the exclusive part of their contract, allowing his show to air on other platforms.
New podcast charts unveiled by Spotify this week show that Rogan's hugely popular show has dropped to second place, behind relative newcomer The Tucker Carlson Show. The conservative commentator debuted his show on his Tucker Carlson Network in December, several months after his April 2023 firing from Fox News.
Rounding out the top five are Alex Cooper's Call Her Daddy, followed by Cancelled with Tana Mongeau and Brooke Schofield, and the Dan Bongino Show.
Newsweek has contacted a representative of Rogan via email for comment.
Beating Rogan in the ratings game is no mean feat. In March, Bloomberg reported that Rogan's Spotify subscriber count sat at 14.5 million. It was followed by TED Talks Daily with 5 million and Call Her Daddy, whose count stood at 3.7 million.
The numbers were gleaned by Bloomberg through a new feature that Spotify has been quietly testing. Those with access to the feature on Spotify's mobile app will see a small rectangle on the left side of shows' landing pages. When tapped, the square shares swipeable previews of episodes, with follower numbers displayed.
While the subscriber count to Rogan's podcast is, indeed, impressive, it doesn't necessarily reflect the numbers that listen to the show, which releases lengthy new episodes multiple times each week.
"This number represents the number of users who have decided to 'follow' a show on Spotify—it doesn't represent a show's total audience or the performance of an episode," Spotify said in a statement. "The early feedback from both creators and users has been encouraging. We have no further details to share at this time."
For comparison of sheer numbers, Rogan's show has 17 million subscribers on YouTube, while his personal Instagram account currently has a follower count of 19.2 million. On X, formerly Twitter, he has 12.6 million followers.
Carlson has 2.6 million subscribers on YouTube, while his follower count on X stands at 13.3 million. The broadcaster has 3.9 million followers on Instagram.
Social media reach counts for a lot of the traffic that podcasts attract that wouldn't be measured by Spotify subscribers. A number of podcasts are also shared to more platforms than just Spotify alone, boosting the figures they attract.
While Rogan has proved to be immensely popular on Spotify, he has faced resistance and boycott calls over the years. In January 2022, Neil Young announced that he would have his music pulled from Spotify if the company did not remove Rogan's podcast. At the time, Young was among a number of artists who accused Rogan of circulating COVID-19 misinformation on his popular show.
Rogan's repeated use of the podcast to disseminate certain COVID-19 viewpoints led a group of 270 scientists and healthcare professionals to publish a letter in January 2022 calling on Spotify to take action against the spread of misinformation on its platform.
While Spotify responded to the medical professionals' request, saying it would publish its platform policy regarding the promotion of medical information and "add a content advisory to any podcast episode that includes a discussion about COVID-19," it stopped short of meeting Young's demand to remove the JRE.
Young subsequently departed Spotify after the platform stuck with Rogan. Other artists, including Joni Mitchell and Nils Lofgren, also removed their music from the platform at the time.
In March of this year, Young announced that he had made a return to Spotify, citing the expansion of Rogan's show onto other streaming platforms as his reason.
"I cannot just leave Apple and Amazon, like I did Spotify, because my music would have very little streaming outlet to music lovers at all," the veteran musician explained in a statement posted to his website. "So I have returned to Spotify, in sincere hopes that Spotify sound quality will improve and people will be able to hear and feel all the music as we made it."
Shortly after the announcement, Rogan paused his podcast conversation with writer and political commentator James Lindsay to acknowledge Young's return.
"By the way, Neil Young came back to Spotify. Congratulations, Neil," Rogan quipped. "And his excuse was he said that because all of the platforms are now allowing my disinformation, he's just going back on Spotify too."
"Great to know you've got some ethics," Rogan added with a laugh, before guest Lindsay said: "Well, everybody's doing it these days—disinformation."
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