"I Don’t Like Being Told What To Do.” Podcast Pioneer Joe Budden On Staying Independent
Podcaster and rapper Joe Budden has built a successful independent media network, rejecting traditional corporate deals to maintain creative and financial control. His success highlights the shift in the media landscape as creators increasingly bypass legacy platforms.
Why it matters
Budden's model represents a growing trend of creator-led businesses challenging the dominance of traditional media conglomerates.
If a career in hip-hop and podcasting has taught him anything, it’s that talent shouldn’t trust big media companies. So he built his own empire and became one of the highest-paid voices in America. B ack 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?’”
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