(PresidentialWire.com)- Bloomberg reported last week that Barack and Michelle Obama’s “Higher Ground” production company won’t be signing a new deal with Spotify after its current deal expires.
Instead, Higher Ground is in talks with other distributors, including Amazon’s Audible and iHeartMedia, hoping to secure a deal with one of Spotify’s competitors. Barack and Michelle hope to announce a new multi-million-dollar deal in the coming weeks.
But the decision not to ink a new deal appears to have come from Spotify, not the Obamas.
In 2019, Spotify reportedly paid Higher Ground $25 million to sign an exclusive licensing deal. And according to reports, Spotify declined to offer the Obamas a new contract in part because they thought they were paying for Barack and Michelle, but the two Obamas weren’t personally making enough appearances to make it worth the money Spotify paid them.
On top of that, the Obamas wanted to have Higher Ground’s productions available on multiple platforms while Spotify was insisting any licensing deal with the Obamas be exclusive.
Exclusivity seems a small price to pay to get $25 million. But the Obamas are never satisfied.
According to reports, the other streaming services the Obamas are talking to also expect Michelle and Barack to do more frequent appearances as a way to generate more interest in Higher Ground’s content. However, the lazy Obamas aren’t willing to commit to more than an 8-episode program each.
Under the 2019 Spotify deal, Barack co-hosted an 8-episode podcast called “Renegades: Born in the USA” with has-been singer Bruce Springsteen that premiered in April 2021, and that was it.
For her part, the shrewish Michelle launched the “Michelle Obama Podcast” in July 2020. The last episode of Michelle’s podcast aired on September 16, 2020.
And that’s all they did for their $25 million.
Spotify definitely got the short end of that deal.
According to Vanity Fair, the Obamas wanted that $25 million to spotlight “new, young voices.” The problem is, Spotify invested that $25 million assuming they would be getting more Obama than they ended up with.
In recent years, Spotify has invested nearly a billion dollars on A-list celebrities, including Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Obamas, and Kim Kardashian. The only investment that turned out well for the company has been Joe Rogan.
