Talent Drives Everything - Oxford Road lands Nathan Aminian, Rogan stays with Spotify(ish)

Attention Chief Audio Officers! We’re back with a very special episode of the Media Roundtable.

Dan Granger (Oxford Road Founder & CEO) is hosting, joined by audio heavyweight Bryan Barletta, (Partner & Founder at Sounds Profitable) and Oxford Road’s newest Agent of Influence Nathan Aminian (EVP of Operations, Oxford Road). 

We’re talking about what Joe Rogan’s new $250M Spotify deal means for podcasting, and an even bigger deal–Nathan joining us at Oxford Road. Let’s dig in.

“You get to a size where there’s a lot more downside in taking on a risk of switching (attribution) partners than upside.”

- Dan Granger, Oxford Road Founder & CEO

A Quarter Billion and Non-Exclusivity 🤯 - Rogan and Spotify make it official–the walls are coming down. So much to sift through but in no particular order:

  1. If Rogan were an athlete, it’d be the 35th biggest contract ever (Sorry, Steph).

  2. A new age of big deals for big podcasters (not just big stars) is upon us.

  3. A bigger market with an ad rev-share could mean Spotify feels good about non-exclusivity and getting a piece of that sweet YouTube simulcast revenue.

  4. CAOs, ride those coattails. If the JRE is out of your budget, book spots on the shows of JRE guests–they get a whopping 47% bump in engagement–bonus impressions!

Oxford Road’s Big Hire 🤩 - If you’ve been in the audio space, odds are you’ve felt the impact of Nathan Aminian’s analytics leadership at some point. As we announced last week, Nathan recently joined Oxford Road as our new EVP of Operations and he’s already making things happen (in the greatest possible way). We live and die by our data but despite the fact that audio is not in short supply of options that promise an attribution silver-bullet, nothing is perfect (Bryan Barletta’s big compliment to Oxford Road: “I don't know if I've heard of a vendor that you haven't worked with or have a perspective on.”) With Nathan, Oxford Road is taking a huge leap in our abilities to integrate disparate sources of information together, while lowering dependencies on third-party vendors. Ultimately, we’ll achieve a level of trust and truth that’ll help all of our CAOs make better decisions. Hard not to get excited about that.

As always, for audio insights you won’t get anywhere else, tune in to the full episode by clicking the link below.

Bianca Gorodinsky