Meghan Markle’s Archetypes podcast has been cancelled, according to reports, as Spotify has slashed 200 more positions after the highly-publicized audio deal failed to rake in the expected sum of cash.
According to British media reports, the decision to lose more jobs comes five months after Spotify let off roughly 600 staff and said goodbye to Dawn Ostroff, the podcast executive who signed up Harry and Meghan.
Spotify has yet to formally announce that Meghan Markle’s podcast has been cancelled.
The podcast premiered on August 23, 2022, and featured Meghan speaking with celebrities, historians, and professionals about the history of gender stereotypes.
According to the New York Post, Meghan Markle was paid more than $18 million by Spotify for her ‘Archetypes’ podcast.
Since its premiere in August 2022, the Duchess of Sussex’s podcast has struggled to stay at the top, falling to number 22 in the charts by November.
According to the New York Post, Spotify is planning to cut another 200 workers after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s highly publicized audio partnership fell short of expectations.
The Swedish streaming giant, which reportedly paid the Duchess of Sussex over $18 million for her “Archetypes” podcast, which debuted last summer, is now forced to lay off a large number of employees as a result of the blunder.
This will be the company’s second round of layoffs this year, following its massive investment in the podcast business.
Spotify stated in January that it has fired off 6% of its 6,600-person workforce.
As the streaming platform prepares to scale down its internal operations, redundancies have now officially reached 2% of its total personnel – a startling figure given how recent the investment was.
Spotify’s head of podcast business, Sahar Elhabashi, stated in a blog post on the streaming platform, “We are expanding our partnership efforts with leading podcasters from across the globe with a tailored approach optimised for each show and creator.”
“This fundamental shift away from a more uniform proposition will allow us to better support the creator community,” Elhabashi added.
“However, doing so necessitates adaptation… As a result, we have made the tough but essential decision to refocus our group’s strategy and cut our global podcast vertical and other operations by about 200 individuals, or 2% of Spotify’s workforce.”
The layoffs demonstrate that the firm is failing to achieve the outcomes it had hoped for in the podcast space, despite investing billions of dollars to have Markle and Joe Rogan’s podcasts available on its platform.
However, Markle’s “Archetypes” podcast has struggled to stay at the top since its premiere in August 2022, falling to number 22 in the charts by November.
Rogan’s programme, for its part, has been plagued by scandals ranging from Covid-19 vaccination disinformation to accusations of using racial slurs and making antisemitic remarks.
Meghan Markle’s $18 MILLION SPOTIFY FLOP