Barack Obama has teamed up with veteran Rockstar Bruce Springsteen for a new podcast series on Spotify.
The former US President will be presenting an eight-episode series with Bruce Springsteen, who Mr. Obama was said to have “formed a deep friendship” with. In the series titled ‘Renegades: Born In The USA’, the pair will discuss issues including race, fatherhood, marriage, and the state of America.
The ‘streaming giant’, Spotify in a statement said the podcast would be “a personal, in-depth discussion between two friends exploring their pasts, their beliefs and the country that they love; as it was, as it is, and as it ought to be going forward”.
The relationship between Mr. Obama, and Springsteen, started when they first met on the 2008 campaign trail and later got deep when they threw their support behind Joe Biden in the recent presidential election. The pair may seem unlikely friends, and even the former president acknowledges this in a trailer for the series. The former President said:
“He’s a white guy from a small town in Jersey. I’m a black guy of mixed race born in Hawaii. He’s a rock and roll icon. I’m… not as cool”.
Barack Obama
Introducing the first episode, Mr. Obama continued: “How did we get here? How could we find our way back to a more unifying American story? That topic came to dominate so many of my conversations last year, with Michelle, with my daughters, and with friends. One of the friends just happened to be Mr. Bruce Springsteen. On the surface, Bruce and I don’t have a lot in common. But over the years, what we’ve found is that we’ve got a shared sensibility. About work, about family, and America. In our own ways, Bruce and I have been on parallel journeys trying to understand this country that’s given us both so much. Trying to chronicle the stories of its people.”
Barack and Michelle Obama’s Production Company signed a deal with Spotify in 2019 to produce exclusive podcasts. The first two episodes of this series are already available on the streaming platform.
Speaking about the streaming platform, Spotify recently announced plans to launch in 85 new countries over the next few days. The 85 new markets include countries from Africa, such as Angola, Benin, Kenya, Namibia, Rwanda, Nigeria, and Ghana.
To ensure usability in all of these new markets, Spotify also officially added support for 36 new languages to its platform, including Romanian, Hindi, and Swahili, so it supports more than 60 languages in total. These areas represent more than 1 billion potential new listeners, according to the company. With the additional countries and territories, Spotify’s total footprint will cover 178 markets which the company says is its biggest concentrated market expansion to date. According to Spotify, its full global music catalog will be available in each of the new markets and the entire podcast catalog will be available in the majority of them.
It is worth noting that in 2020, Spotify recorded a Free Cash Flow of 74million Euros, while its total monthly active users grew 27% to 345million. Their premium Subscribers grew 24%. Spotify ‘Wrapped’ campaign also had 90 million users engaged with more than a 50million shares. It had 2.2million podcasts and 60million songs.
