SmartLess leaves Amazon: How to listen to the popular podcast

SmartLess Media’s flagship podcast hosted by Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, and Sean Hayes is on the move. Amazon Music and Wondery listeners will no longer be able to get episodes early. What is going on?

The SmartLess podcast is not the only one on the move. All of SmartLess Media’s podcasts are moving, and it’s all due to a new deal that’s been inked. Amazon has lost out as another provider landed the exclusive rights to the podcasts in an impressive $100 million three-year deal.

Who landed it? SiriusXM, according to The Verge.

You can still listen to some episodes on Amazon Music

Don’t worry if you don’t want to pay for yet another podcast app. SmartLess and other podcasts from the group will still be available on Amazon Music. Only, fans won’t get access to the new episodes a week early like they used to. That right now goes to SiriusXM users.

Likewise, fans will only be able to listen to the most current season of the shows. All previous seasons are heading to SiriusXM platforms exclusively.

The episodes were always released on other podcast platforms after the initial ad-free streaming on Amazon Music. SiriusXM gets the same deal.

SiriusXM now also gets the exclusive global ad sales on the podcasts as part of the deal.

This may be surprising to some people. After all, exclusive deals for podcasts have started to fall out of favor. The only way they’re done now is if there’s usually some sort of ad-free experience for users to encourage listeners to move over to the new platform. There’s a chance that SmartLess will see a drop in listeners, especially in the week before episodes are available on all other platforms.

Since the new episodes still head to other platforms, the listenership will still be there. The drop will be for the older episodes as Amazon Music and Wondery users refuse to make a move.