Prominent podcaster and former ESPN host Jemele Hill is exiting her Spotify deal, Bloomberg reported Friday.
Hill and Spotify are currently negotiating the terms of Hill’s departure from the media giant, according to Bloomberg. Her exit “will result in the end of her show and network — at least at Spotify, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the negotiation is ongoing,” the outlet reported.
Spotify exclusively streams the Hill’s podcast, “Jemele Hill Is Unbothered,” along with her Unbothered Network of shows, Bloomberg reported. The separation will allegedly end both Hill’s podcast and her network. Hill signed an exclusive deal with Spotify in 2019, and the streaming service teamed up with Hill in 2021 to build a black women-focused podcast network. The network ended up airing two new shows: “The Black Girl Bravado” and “Sanctified.” (RELATED: Meghan McCain Grills Jemele Hill: Is Ben Carson A ‘White Supremacist?’)
Jemele Hill is out at Spotify after daring the company to pay her or another black host $100 million to match Joe Rogan.
Spotify said no.https://t.co/5Q0PIJQLiE
— OutKick (@Outkick) June 2, 2023
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said in January the company will “rein in” spending after Spotify reported significant financial losses in the fourth quarter of 2022.
Hill previously criticized Spotify over its acquisition of popular podcaster Joe Rogan in a 2022 interview with The New York Times (NYT). Old clips resurfaced on social media of Rogan using racial slurs and laughing at jokes some found offensive, according to the NYT. Film director Ava DuVernay terminated her deal with Spotify amid the backlash against Rogan. Musicians such as Neil Young and Joni Mitchell also expressed strong feelings about leaving the streaming service in protest of Rogan.
Hill told the NYT she would like to see the streamer pay a black creator $100 million. The true negotiated value of Rogan’s show at the time was $200 million, the outlet reported, citing two unnamed people familiar with the deal.
“What I would like to see,” Hill told the outlet, “is for [Spotify] to hand $100 million to somebody who is black.”
Spotify launched a Creator Equity Fund in February 2022 to give $100 million to creators from underrepresented communities. The company spent less than 10% of the promised funds as of March, Bloomberg reported at the time.
Jemele Hill called former President Donald Trump a “white supremacist” in a 2017 tweet. She was suspended from ESPN for two weeks that same year, having called on her followers to boycott the Dallas Cowboys’ sponsors over owner Jerry Jones saying he would bench kneeling players. The podcaster compared the United States to Nazi Germany in 2020 and in January, Hill tweeted that the entire policing system is “based on white supremacist violence.”