Spotify has a brand new original that tops its podcast rankings, but you’d probably prefer it if you didn’t know about it.
Last week, Spotify launched a new pop culture show, Breaking Bread, on Spotify Live. Breaking Bread’s record now ranks 11th in Spotify’s top podcast after holding on to second place for most of the week, right behind Joe Rogan. The show’s popularity – and the reason the company may be silent about its new hit – is due to its two hosts: Jackie Oshri Weinreb and Claudia Oshri (also known as Instagram’s girlwithnojob), who come with a huge built-in audience. While the sisters have provided their huge fan base in the app, they have a controversial story that can be problematic for Spotify at a time when the company is extremely cautious.
The sisters had a short-lived show in 2018 on Oath, Verizon’s now-defunct media brand, which was canceled after The Daily Beast reported that their mother was a well-known conspiracy theorist and anti-Muslim activist, Pamela Geller, and that the sisters had previously published racist and anti-Muslim statements on social media. The sisters apologized, deleted their Twitter accounts and relaunched The Morning Toast as an independent podcast. Some fans feel uncomfortable with their reluctance to give up their mother’s activities, but their audience is undeniable. The Oshri sisters have more than 3.5 million Instagram followers, their leading podcast is currently in the top 100 on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and they maintain what appears to be a solid base for Patreon (statistics are now private, but as of 2019, they had more than 9,000 subscribers). The Oshri sisters did not respond to a request for comment.
But if the Oshri sisters are contradictory, you won’t know it from their show. The Morning Toast is mostly plain pop culture, and Breaking Bread is almost the same: Kim Kardashian’s Marilyn Monroe dress, Hailey Bieber’s skincare line, Britney Spears’ wedding. The Spotify Live platform also allows fans to participate in the show by asking for advice on light topics such as training puppies and maiden troubles.
Following the pattern of other Spotify Live shows such as After Hours with Alex Cooper and dating Harry Josie, the original show took place on the Live app and was published as a podcast on Spotify later. Unlike these shows, Breaking Bread did not receive a promotion from Spotify. The company did not publish a press release about the show and did not post it on any of its social channels. The only promotion seems to come from Oshri themselves in their social accounts and podcasts.
This may have something to do with the reaction Spotify received to its nine-figure controversy with Joe Rogan. Rogan has arguably the largest podcast in the world, and as Spotify grows its power for podcasting, the company needs it. But Spotify’s continued support for Rogan has caused some reputational, if not monetary, damage. Spotify declined to comment on why they chose to partner with the Oshri sisters or whether their past had anything to do with the lack of promotion for the show, but the way the company approached Breaking Bread seems to be going to Oshri’s significant fan base without luggage.
Even if Breaking Bread itself is harmless, it debuted at a time when Spotify was especially careful. Last week, the company announced a Safety Advisory Board to support its content moderation policies (a move that Geller called a “government-sponsored internal coup”) and struck a new deal with Integral Ad Science to strengthen the brand’s safety analysis. for advertisers.
But the company is also trying to boost its social audio app Spotify Live (formerly Spotify Greenroom) at a time when social audio is booming and Breaking Bread could be its biggest hit to date. If Oshrys continues to deliver numbers, the show will be hard for the company to ignore.
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