Back in 2015, talent manager Ian Schwartzman emailed Spotify with a request—his client, rapper Joe Budden, wanted to add episodes of his newly launched podcast to his artist profile on the music streaming platform. “And the response I got was comical,” Schwartzman tells Forbes, “It was, ‘What is podcasting?’”
A decade later, podcasting has become a cornerstone of media, and Spotify is competing with companies such as Amazon, iHeartMedia, SiriusXM and now even Netflix in a market that has grown from less than $100 million in annual revenue a decade ago into a $9 billion industry. Budden and Schwartzman have spent the intervening years doing everything they can to earn a slice of that ever-growing pie, bootstrapping The Joe Budden Network to an estimated $20 million in earnings over the past 12 months, enough to be ranked among the highest-paid podcasters in the world for 2026. And unlike nearly every other performer on that list, they did it without a broad distribution and ad sales deal from a major media company, or a private equity investor.
“Honestly, I don’t like being told what to do,” the 45-year-old Budden says of his desire for independence. “One of the worst things to me is having to rely on somebody else to give me what I’m either owed, what I deserve, or what I am willing to go out and work for.”
In Budden’s mind, that’s a lesson learned the hard way. Born and raised in Spanish Harlem, he signed his first recording contract with Def Jam at 21, leading to a self-titled album in 2003 and a Grammy nomination for his single, “Pump It Up.” But clashes with the label started almost immediately over both creative control and financial fair play. Budden soon built a reputation as someone who wasn’t afraid to air out his grievances into any available microphone, from a brief stint as a guest host of New York City’s Hot 97 radio station to the VH1 reality show Love & Hip-Hop and regular YouTube vlogs, which he started appearing on as early as 2007.
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Those platforms gave Budden a place to document his career as he bounced around smaller indie labels and experimented with digital-only releases, before releasing his final album, Rage & The Machine, completely independently in 2016—a decision which he says led to the most successful period of his music career. Around the same time, it became apparent to Budden that podcasting was the optimal form for his no-holds-barred storytelling, and his show (initially titled I’ll Name This Podcast Later) quickly became an essential destination for conversation about the hip-hop world.
“He was one of the first rappers who was pulling back the curtain,” says Charlamagne Tha God, cohost of The Breakfast Club and founder of The Black Effect Podcast Network. “It doesn’t hurt that he’s a polarizing person. I always say polarizing is the best way to be, because you have a bunch of people that love you talking about you, and you have bunch of people that hate you talking about you—but the reality is the algorithm doesn’t know the difference.”
Despite Spotify’s initial cluelessness about the format, the company signed Budden to its first exclusive podcasting deal in 2018. By then, the Stockholm-based platform had clearly seen the potential of the medium, following Budden’s deal with a billion-dollar shopping spree over the next few years that included acquisitions of podcast companies Gimlet Media and Anchor FM (for a combined $340 million), networks like Bill Simmons’ The Ringer (for $200 million) and a host of exclusive licensing deals with Joe Rogan, Alex Cooper, the Obamas, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, and Kim Kardashian.
At the time, Budden’s $2 million annual guarantee felt like a windfall, but Schwartzman says the Spotify deal didn’t cut them into any ad revenue sharing, so when the show exploded and topped the overall Spotify chart during the two-year term, there was no opportunity for an upside. Then word got back to Budden that Spotify, which had recently gone public, was using his show as a selling point for investors, christening a lucrative new category of “Original Audio,” and yet any attempts to negotiate for stock were a non-starter. Another time, Budden says a performance bonus was not paid out because Spotify told him its systems were hacked and all the data was erased, specifically for his category. Budden was sensing chicanery not dissimilar from his experience with music labels, though he has another name for it—and it involves two four-letter words. (Spotify did not respond to a request for comment on the incident.)
So when Spotify offered Budden $20 million for a two-year renewal in 2020, he didn’t even bother to negotiate. His mindset was clear: “Get me out of here.”
The time with Spotify did, however, serve as an education for Budden and Schwartzman about how the podcasting business worked, empowering them to launch the show independently on Patreon, a platform that takes a flat 10% fee for handling administrative tasks but makes no editorial or ownership claims. It didn’t hurt that, as part of their agreement, Patreon also gave them stock in the company.
That freedom came with its own set of problems, including the departure of longtime co-hosts Rory Farrell and Jamil Clay over their own revenue sharing disputes, but it unlocked the show’s true earning power by creating multiple revenue streams. In addition to the two ad-supported episodes released free to all platforms each week, additional episodes and behind-the-scenes content are also available exclusively to Patreon subscribers, who pay $5, $10, $25 or even $50 per month to unlock various membership perks. Schwartzman claims The Joe Budden Podcast Network—which now includes three shows, with two more debuting in August—has more than 70,000 subscribers on Patreon and generates more than $1 million per month, making him the biggest creator on its platform.
Some podcast dealmakers tell Forbes that Budden’s direct-to-consumer route is his best option because his content is less “brand-safe” to advertisers, given his penchant for heated conversation and colorful language. When asked about this, Budden laughs and shakes his head. “Brand-safe is coded language,” he says. But Schwartzman doesn’t dismiss the stigma.
“I’ve been in rooms where the discussion about advertising in a black-hosted space is problematic for certain brands. And if Joe was just a white guy wearing a suit, we would be able to easily get him 10 times these ads,” says Schwartzman. “It’s a problem, because while you think you’re being brand safe—racist but brand safe—you’re also leaving out the most influential community in the world that would actually make your brand blow up.”
That’s part of the reason why Budden and Schwartzman hired web developers and set out make their own social media platform, first called “joebuddencommunity.com,” where fans could gather online without gatekeepers or algorithms controlling the conversations. Its interface looks like a lot like X.com but functions more like a souped-up Discord, with live streams, chat rooms, and the entire back catalog of 1,500 podcast episodes. In late July, they renamed the site “acommunity.com,” confident that other creators will eventually want to utilize their toolkit.
The pair have even found a way to monetize “clipping,” the practice of third-party users posting segments of podcasts online as a form of promotion. While the traditional system operates in the shadows, with IP holders paying clip creators $1 or $2 for every thousand views they get, A Community flips the system and offers clip creators a full license to excerpt whatever they want with full monetization capabilities for a $500-per-month fee.
That is the Budden ethos in miniature—the idea that unlimited success is within reach, if only you throw off the shackles of the established system. On the podcast side, he and Schwartzman hope their transparency about money will show other creators that the independent route is monetizable and scalable. Schwartzman believes the Budden brand could grow from $20 million to $100 million or more in the coming years, without sacrificing precious control.
“Independence is important if you believe there’s a top of the mountain that the corporate world can’t see for you,” Schwartzman says. “We see it.”