After Their Deal with Spotify Ends, Expert Says Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Empire is Beginning to “Crumble”

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle laugh onstage

(Image credit: Getty)

published 17 June 2023

News broke this week that Meghan Markle’s podcast with Spotify, “Archetypes,” would not be renewed for a second season, signaling the end of her and husband Prince Harry’s multimillion-dollar deal with the company. And royal experts are speaking out about the severed deal and what it means for the couple, with royal biographer Angela Levin surmising that the pair’s “value isn’t high as it was once”—and also predicting that their future projects will be “a disaster,” per The Sun.

Royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams agreed, per Page Six, calling the end of the lucrative deal a “failure.”

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle sit in the audience at an event

“The idea was that several series would be produced,” he said. “Since only one was, there’s no doubt the contract could be considered a failure. Clearly, this relationship hasn’t been as mutually beneficial.”

Harry and Meghan signed the $20 million deal with Spotify back in 2020, not long after their step back as working members of the royal family. An insider told The Post that Harry and Meghan didn’t produce enough content to justify their full payout.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at the one year countdown to Invictus Games

In a joint statement, Spotify and Archewell Audio said they have “mutually agreed to part ways and are proud of the series we made together.” Yet Spotify’s head of podcast innovation Bill Simmons apparently made comments on his own podcast that Harry and Meghan were “grifters” about 24 hours after the announcement of the couple’s dissolving partnership with Spotify.

“I wish I’d been involved in the Harry and Meghan leave Spotify negotiation,” Simmons said. “The f—king grifters. That’s the podcast that we should’ve launched with them.” He continued “I gotta get drunk one night and tell the story of the Zoom I had with Harry to try to help him with podcast ideas. The grifters.”

As to the crumbling empire comment, though, let’s not maybe go that far—Harry and Meghan still have a Netflix deal worth a reported $100 million, and Harry reportedly made around $20 million from Penguin Random House for his memoir, Spare, released earlier this year.

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Rachel Burchfield is a writer, editor, and podcaster whose primary interests are fashion and beauty, society and culture, and, most especially, the British Royal Family and other royal families around the world. She serves as Marie Claire’s Senior Celebrity and Royals Editor and has also contributed to publications like Allure, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, People, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and W, among others. Before taking on her current role with Marie Claire, Rachel served as its Weekend Editor and later Royals Editor. She is the cohost of Podcast Royal, a show that was named a top five royal podcast by The New York Times. A voracious reader and lover of books, Rachel also hosts I’d Rather Be Reading, which spotlights the best current nonfiction books hitting the market and interviews the authors of them. Rachel frequently appears as a media commentator, and she or her work has appeared on outlets like NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN, and more.