Jay Shetty spent three years as a Hindu monk in India and Britain. Before he moved his seven-year-old podcast On Purpose to Netflix and Spotify in mid-July, he spent, according to Forbes, around half a million dollars renovating the studio where the show is recorded. The thirty-eight-year-old author sits in a house in the Hollywood Hills, which Forbes values at $8 million, and recently signed a new deal with Spotify and Netflix that is estimated to bring him around $100 million over the next three years.
“I mean, I'm not a monk anymore,” Shetty told Forbes. “Today I consider myself an entrepreneur and a leader in this space, and that allows me to have the ability to use money as a resource to do good in the world and create impact in the way that we've chosen to do that.”
From iHeart to Spotify and Netflix
The audio and video of On Purpose will now be distributed by Spotify and will also run on Netflix. Both companies share the payment. Shetty's previous agreement on distribution and advertising sales was with iHeartMedia. According to Forbes, that deal brought him around $21 million over the past twelve months, before tax and before payments to agents and managers.
Shetty launched On Purpose in 2019. According to Forbes, his long conversations with guests such as Michelle Obama or Selena Gomez reach roughly the same number of people on YouTube as listen through the iHeartMedia network. The overlap between audio and video is exactly what the new deal is about. “When I started, video wasn't normal for a podcast,” Shetty told Forbes. “Now we had the four largest streamers bidding for the show.”
The creator keeps the rights
The difference from film or television lies in ownership. Podcasters keep the rights to the content of their show, so networks and platforms pay millions only for a licence to distribute it and sell advertising around it for a number of years. The creator remains the owner of the show even after the contract expires and can offer it again.
That is what makes a podcast a different asset from a script or a series. The reward grows with access to an audience that the creator owns and that the distributor only borrows for a set period.
Streaming services enter podcasts
Premium streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu or Tubi largely ignored the rise of podcasts for more than ten years. In that time YouTube became the largest podcast platform in the world, as Forbes reports. Since 2025 they have started entering the market to take some of YouTube's lead in the time people spend with them.
The entry of video platforms alongside established audio distributors, among them Spotify, SiriusXM and Amazon, has pushed fees into a range that used to belong to film stars. Shetty's new deal is among them.
Shetty in the context of top-tier podcast deals
Other creators have signed similar contracts. Joe Rogan signed a new deal with Spotify in February 2024 worth up to $250 million. Compared with his previous contract from 2020, worth $200 million, his show no longer stays exclusively on one platform and also reaches YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Music.
Alex Cooper moved the show Call Her Daddy from Spotify to SiriusXM. According to sources familiar with the terms, which CNN cites, the three-year deal is worth $125 million and gives SiriusXM exclusive rights to advertising and distribution. The previous Spotify contract from 2021 was reportedly worth about $60 million, according to CNN. In each case, the distributor pays for a time-limited licence to a show that remains the creator's property.
A European footprint
The prices in these deals are set by the American streaming war, but both names behind Shetty's contract have European roots. Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon founded Spotify in Stockholm in 2006, and the company is still based there. Shetty was born in London, graduated from Cass Business School and only then left for a monastery.
The model is the same every time. The creator owns the show and lends it to the distributor for several years, while platforms compete for the attention of viewers and bid up the price.
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