The Joe Rogan Experience has been replaced as the UK’s most popular podcast on Spotify’s charts by weekly video podcast This Week on The Internet from viral YouTuber ‘WillNE’.
First reported by Dexerto, TWOTI took the number one spot in the platform’s Top Podcasts chart from 8 April and, at time of writing, currently remains in that position. It is unclear what caused the spike in the charts.
Before that, Spotify exclusive The Joe Rogan Experience was consistently ranked as the number one most popular podcast across the UK Spotify charts and continues to be number one on the US charts. This podcast was also ranked as the most popular podcast on Spotify in 2022, according to the annual Spotify Wrapped rankings list. While Rogan was previously dethroned in the glabal charts by Meghan Markle’s Archetypes podcast and Kim Kardashian’s true-crime show The System, his show reclaimed the number one spot within a few short months.
Rogan has brought an average of 11 million listeners per episode to the Spotify platform after signing an exclusivity deal in 2020 worth $200 million. Both TJRE and TWOTI are published as video podcasts on both Spotify and YouTube, with WillNE amassing 4.91 million subscribers on the video platform and Rogan standing at 14.6 million subscribers.
Spotify has been making a concerted effort to lean into video podcasts, and other shows with video elements that are currently ranked in the Spotify top 10 podcasts chart in the UK include Spotify original Call Her Daddy with Alex Cooper, The Diary of A CEO with Steven Bartlett, The Fellas Studios’ Chloe Vs The World, The Bomb Squad Pod, and ShxtsNGigs.
At the annual Spotify Stream On event in March this year, the platform spoke about the rising popularity of video podcasts, revealing that over 70,000 of its users have started to add video to their podcasts. The company also announced that it will be rolling its hosting service Anchor into the Spotify for Podcasters all-in-one creator platform, adding the ability for any creator to upload video podcasts without having to be hosted on Anchor.
“I think videos add another dimension,” said internet personality Emma Chamberlain while being interviewed on stage at Stream On after announcing that her podcast Anything Goes “more than doubled its listenership” since moving exclusively to the platform at the start of 2023. “Audio is incredibly powerful, but seeing somebody's body language, seeing somebody's facial expressions, it feels more intimate, and I think it just allows for even more connection through the screen through the years.”
