Prince Harry, Meghan Markle ‘Humiliated’ After Parting Ways With Spotify: Ideas Were ‘Laughable’

Things seemed amicable back in June when Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced with Spotify that they’d made a “mutual decision” to part ways on their $20 million deal. But that veneer was shattered in early October when the podcast service’s boss Daniel Ek revealed what really happened with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex — who produced only 12 podcasts in two and a half years. 

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Explaining that Spotify had hoped to “make consumers happy,” Ek diplomatically observed that the rogue royals’ content hadn’t. (Spotify exec Bill Simmons was less polite when he called Harry and Meghan “The F–king Grifters” on his own podcast in June.)

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More specifically, the pair failed to live up to their end of the bargain, with Meghan’s Archetypes series failing to excite and Harry, 39, reportedly coming up with ideas that were “laughable,” a source tells In Touch. “The Sussexes haven’t talked about it publicly,” adds the insider. “But it was humiliating for them both.” Soon after, the former Suits star, 42, signed on with a powerhouse Hollywood agency. Says the insider, “The Spotify failure put a fire under both of them to keep moving forward.”