8m not sure how his podcasts were distributed previously, but I would have thought a more multiplatform approach would work better long term. A lot of people don't have Spotify, I'm one of those, for the same price as Spotify I can get YouTube premium for me and the extended family, kill all ads, allow downloads and access to a decent music streaming catalog. Last time I checked the prices were not to dissimilar.
I think it was more than 100MM, he was making ~30MM per year on his own, and he signed a 3 year deal with Spotify. Im not sure why you'd sell for the exact amount you'd make if you just kept doing what you are doing with the exception of having to handle all advertising yourself and possible delisting/banning from YouTube.
So he was a unicorn? A startup valued at a billion dollars was supposed to be so rare that it’s a unicorn, and now people are doing that with a microphone in a cave ;) (or little more, but technically he’s one voice).
