Michelle Obama launches podcast with Audible after split from Spotify

Michelle Obama launches new podcast with Amazon’s Audible less than a year after split from Spotify due to ‘clash over exclusivity rights’: Show will focus on race, relationships and adapting and feature celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres and Oprah

• Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast is an eight-part series releasing in March
• Its announcement comes less than a year after the Obamas cut ties with Spotify
• The former first lady will interview Ellen DeGeneres and Orpah in the new show

Michelle Obama is launching a new podcast with Amazon’s Audible less than a year after she and her husband Barack severed ties with Spotify, allegedly over exclusivity rights among other things.

The new podcast, The Light Podcast, will debut on March 7 and remain exclusive to Amazon for two weeks, at which point it will be made universally available.

It will be an eight-part podcast series featuring interviews with guests such as Ellen DeGeneres and Oprah Winfrey discussing topics like race and relationships.

The announcement of Michelle Obama’s second podcast comes after last April Spotify declined to renew a deal with the Obamas, which was estimated to have been worth tens of millions of dollars.

Spotify wanted the Obamas to feature on podcasts more regularly than they were willing and on a continual basis. They also wanted to retain prolonged exclusive rights to streaming them, Bloomberg reported at the time.

Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast is an eight-part series releasing on March 7 on Audible. It will remain exclusive to Amazon for two weeks before a more general release

The Light Podcast was born out of a book tour promoting Michelle Obama’s second best-selling book, The Light We Carry, she said in a statement on Wednesday.

To promote the book she visited six cities and conducted interviews with show business personalities including Tyler Perry, Conan O’Brien, Gayle King, Hoda Kotb and David Letterman.

The Light Podcast will feature interviews Obama conducted with varies showbusiness personalities while promoting her second best-seller last year

Conversations with those guests touched on themes like relationships, race and adapting to change, she said, and will be shared in the new podcast.

‘Though only a few thousand people were able to attend the events live, these remarkable conversations can now be heard by everyone,’ Audible said in a news release. 

It is not clear if there will be any additional material contained in the eight episodes.

‘Like so many people around the world, I felt isolated, disconnected and discouraged during the pandemic. Writing The Light We Carry was a way for me to make sense of it and reflect on some of the biggest challenges we all face in life,’ Obama said in a statement.

‘The tour was an incredible way to share those stories with my readers and connect with real people once again,’ she added. 

‘That’s what Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast is all about – it’s a deeper examination of those fun and meaningful moments.’

The podcast is produced by Higher Ground, a television and podcast production company she founded with the former president. Part of their divorce from Spotify was rooted in their preference to produce podcasts giving others a voice. Spotify, by contrast, were more interested in the Obama’s themselves.

Michelle Obama has said in her new podcast she will discuss themes like relationships, race and adapting to change with various personalities including Ellen DeGeneres

Included in the new Audible podcast will be an interview between Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey

The Obamas signed their deal with Spotify in 2019 as they planned their post presidency media business

The Obamas signed their deal with Spotify in 2019 as they planned their post presidency media business.

Since then, Michelle hosted her own podcast – The Michelle Obama Podcast – and Barack appeared in a series with Bruce Springsteen titled Renegades: Born in the USA.

The release of those podcasts was a source of tension between the two parties, Bloomberg reported, as they were only made available on other services months later.

Between them the couple only released 18 podcast episodes in more than two years with Spotify. 

In June 2022, months after the break up, it was reported that Higher Ground had reached an agreement with Audible on a multi-year production deal having also negotiated with other platforms including iHeartMedia.

The deal with Audible gave the Amazon subsidiary the right to have a look at new material before others in the industry gain access to it, Reuters reported at the time.

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