Joe Rogan is widely regarded as the most popular podcaster on Spotify. Now, there’s public data that backs up that assertion. A new feature launched by Spotify allows users to track the follower counts of specific podcasts, and The Joe Rogan Experience has nearly three times more followers than the next show on the list.
Bloomberg located the follower counts of top podcasts by relying on a feature Spotify has been testing over the past month. The unnamed tool lets users swipe through episode previews and follow podcasts that pique their interests. Each show’s total follower count is listed as part of that display.
According to that public count, The Joe Rogan Experience has 14.5 million followers on Spotify. No other podcast listed in Bloomberg‘s report has more than five million followers. The list of shows with seven-digit follower counts includes several creator-led programs, such as Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy (3.7 million followers) and Emma Chamberlain’s Anything Goes (3.1 million followers).
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A Spotify rep noted that podcaster follower counts are not necessarily an accurate indicator of a show’s popularity. “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,” reads a comment from the company. “The early feedback from both creators and users has been encouraging. We have no further details to share at this time.”
Bloomberg added that some shows with relatively middling follower counts rank highly on other indicators of popularity. The left-wing political podcast Chapo Trap House, for example, rakes in a six-digit monthly sum on Patreon despite counting just 127,000 Spotify followers.
But the public numbers validate The Joe Rogan Experience‘s status as Spotify’s flagship audio program. The streamer inked an exclusive deal with Rogan in 2020, paying $100 million for the rights to the UFC commentator’s Experience.
Rogan has had a positive impact on Spotify’s bottom line since then, though he has also been dogged by controversy. His controversial views on the COVID-19 vaccine caused musicians like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell to pull their music from Spotify, though their catalogs recently returned to the platform.
Spotify will have to decide how much it emphasizes follower counts as it continues to expand the scope of its platform. Its recent rollouts have included support for video podcasts and a library of full-length music videos.
