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Now that Spotify has a little extra money after their $20 million deal with Prince Harry and Meghan ended prematurely, they’re giving some of it to Trevor Noah.
The former host of The Daily Show announced this week that he’ll be hosting a new podcast on Spotify that will air once a week.
Noah hosted the late-night talk show for seven years before announcing his departure in 2022. He said he’d be returning to stand-up comedy. True to his word, he launched the Off the Record tour, which heads overseas through June and then returns to the U.S. in Richmond, Virginia, in October.
But it looks like the South African-born media personality and comedian, who also authored the bestseller Born a Crime: Memories from a South African Childhood, missed the one-on-one connection between interviewer and subject. His Spotify podcast is billed as one that will include conversations with “some of the most influential and interesting figures around the world.”
The new podcast was announced via a chat with Noah and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity event.
Noah told Variety, who first reported the deal, that podcasting “just gives me an opportunity to expand a little bit more on some of the elements that television doesn’t necessarily allow you to as much — which is long form.”
He added, “For example, a podcast lets you speak to somebody for, say, 40 minutes or more if you need to, and you’re not restricted by the blocks of TV time as they’re dictated by ads.”
Another plus for Noah is that podcasts have built-in flexibility. “I can be anywhere in the world creating an episode,” he said.
Spotify has recently pulled back on its podcast roster, cutting 200 jobs earlier this month in that division and combining Parcast and Gimlet into one studio under the Spotify Studios banner. Podcasters Joe Budden, Ava DuVernay and Jemele Hill, and Harry and Meghan’s Archewell were all personalities that Spotify invested money in and then cut ties with. The Obamas were also once with Spotify but moved their Higher Ground Productions company to Audible.
But the company is still a big dog in the podcast arena with what they say is more than 5 million podcasts on its platform.
“Spotify is the ultimate audio destination, and partnering with Trevor Noah, one of the world’s most brilliant and distinctive voices, will make for captivating storytelling that will delight our more than 100 million podcast listeners around the world,” Julie McNamara, Spotify’s VP and Head of Global Podcast Studios said in a statement.
