Crypto News: Inside Bari Weiss's hit podcast about J.K. Rowling

Hello and welcome back to Soundbite. This week we have a whole lot of Spotify things to discuss in addition to the surprising backstory behind one of the biggest podcast hits in recent months. As always, if you have something to share, reach me through email, and if you haven't yet subscribed to this newsletter, please do so here.

During a time when the podcast industry is pulling back on limited series, shutting down productions and wedging multiple shows into single feeds in an effort to find an audience, one new show has tapped into a wellspring of listeners.

The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling debuted in February with the stated mission of examining some of the "most contentious conflicts of our time through the life and career of the world's most successful author." More specifically, the show explores the controversy surrounding the Harry Potter author after various tweets and remarks she made on gender and trans issues resulted in a backlash from people criticizing her as transphobic. Vox offers a complete timeline of Rowling's comments here if you want more specifics.

The podcast is a creation of the Free Press, the Los Angeles-based media company started last year by Bari Weiss and Nellie Bowles.

The first two episodes trace Rowling's history both as a domestic abuse survivor and as a writer once despised by some ultraconservative communities for her books about wizardry and magic. All of which explores how such experiences ultimately informed her controversial opinions on trans issues. Later episodes include interviews with trans fans and segments in which the producers and the host present broader criticism to Rowling directly.

The weighty subject hasn't deterred listeners. In fact, the program might be one of the biggest limited series hits in recent months. Since the show's premiere two months ago, nearly 6 million listeners have heard it, according to producer Andy Mills.

His team, he says, has tapped into the broader potential of podcasting, in part, by taking listeners out of "culture-war mode" on a thorny, polarizing issue — one that has been discussed ad nauseam in certain podcast arenas, often without much nuance.

"I hope that it comes out in the work that you can tell that the people who put this together were not looking for clicks and celebrity gossip," Mills said. "We're trying very hard to look very deep at not only the people involved but also ourselves."

Mills, who conceptualized and pitched this show, is a former New York Times staffer who helped create the popular show The Daily as well as Caliphate — a 2020 production that was discredited when one of the primary story subjects was revealed to have fabricated much of their narrative. At the time of the resulting imbroglio, several of Mills's then-colleagues began tweeting and discussing allegedly inappropriate behavior by him toward women over the course of his career. Mills later admitted to having given a colleague a back rub and having poured a drink on a coworker's head. He eventually resigned from the Times.

Mills says the experience impacted "my journalism and my passions for what I'm interested" in.

"It was a life-changing experience to go through that," he said.

The Free Press's Weiss is also a former Times employee who famously resigned in 2020 after much back and forth rancor with colleagues at the paper. Prior to The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling, Mills helped Weiss spin up the new organization's other main audio product, Weiss's own weekly podcast Honestly.

The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling is hosted by Megan Phelps-Roper, a writer who is perhaps best known for having personally walked away from the Westboro Baptist Church — a group notorious for its anti-gay beliefs — and publishing a book about the experience.

In short, many of the individuals behind the podcast about J.K. Rowling have themselves grappled with feelings of alienation and repudiation from the mainstream.

So far, audiences have reacted mostly favorably.

The show has risen through the podcast charts, driving conversation and, naturally, attracting some criticism. Vulture's Nick Quah published a piece titled "Can Anyone Trust The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling?" in which he questions the show's motives.

"The show is less a character study of a controversial person and more a defense of someone it claims is misunderstood," Quah wrote. "Whether this is the product of naïveté or cynicism on the show's part, it's hard to say."

Reviews on Apple Podcasts have leaned towards the positive. It sits at a 4.6 out of 5 while on Spotify it maintains a 4.8, but reviews also include some comments from people bemoaning the premise.

"I just can't handle one of the richest people on earth trying to explain how she's the persecuted one," someone writes. "My god, get a grip."

YouTuber Natalie Wynn of ContraPoints also published a nearly two-hour response deconstructing the show's premise and arguments. The video has over 2 million views.

Meanwhile, Weiss feels the team has accomplished its stated goal.

"This podcast handled such a sensitive and complex topic with such care and empathy," she wrote via email. "Based on audience reactions, I think there is a real appetite and need for spaces to have these deeply complicated conversations."

With Spotify's financial results coming up on Tuesday, let's look at the flood of news from the company over the past week or so. I'll break it up into sections:

A new podcast strategy surfaces

As part of its layoffs in January, Spotify restructured its podcast organization. Dawn Ostroff, the chief content and advertising business officer, left, and Sahar Elhabashi stepped up to VP, head of podcast business, reporting to Alex Norström, co-president. What wasn't clear at the time was what exactly would change strategically.

Last week, Elhabashi updated her staff on her new priorities, which include (1) growing on-platform consumption, (2) creating more monetization opportunities for creators, (3) earning greater creator loyalty by helping them make more money and find new fans and (4) capturing more ad dollars by expanding the reach of the company's own shows outside of the platform. As part of the latter objective, Semafor reports, Spotify will start distributing some of its previously exclusive shows from Gimlet Media onto other podcast apps.

None of this sounds revolutionary, necessarily. But it's clear Spotify sees a business opportunity in being able to more successfully sell ads not just for its own shows but also those of other networks. This is why I previously highlighted the company's deal with NPR. These types of arrangements with large networks provide Spotify with more inventory and more money-making opportunities.

This strategy is also at work with a partnership the company just announced with Jellysmack, a digital creator-centric media organization. The company will bring some of its creators' video content to Spotify, which will sell ads against the programming and share the resulting revenue, according to a Jellysmack spokesperson.

A shake-up in audiobooks

Nir Zicherman, co-founder of the Spotify-acquired Anchor and VP, global head of audiobooks, announced he's leaving the company at the end of September. David Kaefer, VP and global head of business affairs, will continue to oversee the audiobooks business.

At the same time, another employee on the audiobooks team, Sara Lerner, head of business strategy and operations for audiobooks and gated content, announced on LinkedIn that she left the company earlier this year. Another employee assigned to the vertical tweeted that they were laid off as part of the restructuring within the division.

This week, CEO Daniel Ek traveled to Washington, D.C. in an effort to shore up support for the streaming service's ongoing battle with Apple over App Store fees and, particularly, Apple essentially nuking the company's audiobooks product.

Apple told my colleague Emily Birnbaum that Spotify's app had previously been rejected for "not following the guidelines regarding including explicit in-app communications to direct users outside the app to make digital purchases. We provided them with clear guidance on how to resolve the issue, and approved their app after they made changes that brought it into compliance."

My sense is that some of this could be solved if and when Spotify releases new subscription tiers that include an all-you-can-eat audiobooks model. A Spotify spokesperson tells me the company's audiobook strategy hasn't changed and that it's dedicated to building a "great listener experience and developing new, innovative business models."

A brewing, Swedish union battle

Earlier this month, Swedish Spotify employees went public with an effort to unionize. CEO Ek responded internally, pushing back against the union's narrative and questioning the need for a collective agreement because, he argued, it'll make it harder for Spotify to compete for talent and also wouldn't have prevented recent layoffs from happening.

"The unions' central questions about continuous skills development, annual salary revisions and salary increases in relation to the 'brand' are obvious to us at Spotify," he wrote. "In the tough competition for Swedish and international talent, we must offer salaries, benefits and staff options that allow employees to share in the value Spotify creates."

A spokesperson declined to comment.

More purchase shutdowns

I wrote a couple weeks ago that Spotify was shutting down its Live app. Last week, Spotify announced it would also shut down Heardle, a game it acquired less than a year ago that challenged players to identify a song from just a snippet. With layoffs, budget constraints and bigger questions about Spotify's podcasting efforts, I read these decisions as a moment for the company to focus on its core businesses.

About the live audio app shutdown, a Spotify spokesperson said it has seen "promising results in the artist-focused use case of 'listening parties,' which we will continue to explore moving forward to facilitate live interactions between artists and fans." As for Heardle, the spokesperson said Spotify will focus on other music discovery methods.

About that Drake and The Weeknd "collaboration"

Over the past weekend, some of you might have seen the mysterious song Heart on My Sleeve from a poster named @ghostwriter977 blowing up on TikTok and social media. It's a track designed to sound like a collaboration between Drake and The Weeknd. But it was allegedly actually created through artificial intelligence. (There are still open questions about which portions were AI-produced and how it all came together.) Universal Music Group, whose Republic Records label works with both artists, issued a statement calling for streaming partners to prevent the "use of their services in ways that harm artists."

Days later, the song was officially taken down and unavailable on streaming services, including YouTube and TikTok. Copies keep springing up online, however, including one on YouTube I spotted today that had garnered over 50,000 plays in just a day. Ghostwriter also put a link on their TikTok profile offering to text people the song. I wrote last week about UMG's particularly strong stance against AI products that infringe on copyright, including the use of UMG-owned music to train the software. This incident, I suspect, is only the beginning of the types of fights we're going to be seeing a lot of in the music industry involving AI.

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