🚨 Joe Budden & Ian Turned a Podcast Into a MEDIA EMPIRE… And Patreon Helped 😳🗂️

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]Smoke is quieting down.

[00:00:02]Seems like we've got to a lot of the smoke. Dub, you got smoke?

[00:00:07]>> What's going on, family? We are back with the files. All right. Now, it's your boy Dub back with another one today. And we got to talk about Patreon.

[00:00:15]Ian Schwarzman, Joe Buddton, and the business behind the business. Now, listen. Before y'all start saying Dub is hating and all of that. All right, relax. Okay, I'm not here to bury Ian and Joe, okay? Actually, I think Ian might be one of the smartest dudes in podcasting right now, real talk. Because while everybody else was fighting over ad deals, YouTube clips, this dude, man, he was in the back negotiating equity.

[00:00:41]Okay, now that's a different level.

[00:00:43]That's chess right there. But sometimes when people play chess at a high level, the rest of the room starts wondering, hold on, hold on. Wait a minute. How much power is too much power? Okay, now that's the conversation. I want to pull something up real quick. All right, hold up. Let me pull this up on the screen.

[00:01:03]Let me actually pull it up on this one right here. So, I made a post today on Twitter. Okay, I said, "How is Joe Button blocking paid Patreon members every week? Patreon's validation was $4 billion in 2021, but today it's 1.5 billion. Last year, Patreon made 629 million. Joe Buddton accounts for a little over 2% of Patreon's revenue.

[00:01:28]What happens if Patreon goes belly up?

[00:01:31]Did JBP strike a deal with Patreon where they'd own the app? If Patreon could sustain couldn't sustain now, that might be the play Ian Schwarzman was possibly talking about. If Patreon can't swim, the JP the JBP could uh possibly own it.

[00:01:48]Okay. Ian did say on spaces that his biggest mistake was not getting equity in Spotify, but they have equity in Patreon. Okay, so I wanted to speculate on this. Now, a lot of people they was they was, you know, they was tweeting.

[00:02:05]Okay, how many views it's at? It's at 14,000.

[00:02:08]All right, it's at 14,000 views. Follow me on Twitter if you haven't already.

[00:02:13]Okay. Now, the room reports they had dropped something, okay, in the tweets.

[00:02:20]They dropped something that uh this Patreon situation, you know, it got a little it got a little crazy, okay? He's saying basically that this is not just no podcast. You know, the JBP is just ain't no podcast. This is a real media infrastructure. This is creator politics. This is tech platform influence. You know what I'm saying?

[00:02:43]This is like basically they're the new entertainment industry. Okay. Now, let's slow it down for people in the back.

[00:02:51]Back in 2021 when Joe Budden, okay, the when the network when they left Spotify and jumped to Patreon, they ain't just signed a regular creator contract.

[00:03:04]Joe and Ian reportedly negotiated equity in Patreon itself.

[00:03:09]Meaning they don't use Patreon, they own a piece of it as well. Okay, now let's stop right there because that changes the entire conversation. Okay, that means if Patreon wins, they win. And Ian publicly said this himself. He basically said, "We wanted ownership." All right.

[00:03:33]And salute to that. That's a smart businessman right there. But here's where things get tricky because Ian also reportedly has advisory involvement with Patreon. Meaning he's not just a creative, you know, manager over there.

[00:03:47]He's not just a network operator. He's not just even an equity partner. He's also connected to conversations involving the platform itself.

[00:03:57]>> What is your relationship with the Joe Button podcast? I am Joe Bun's business partner.

[00:04:03]>> You own a part of the show network.

[00:04:05]>> Yeah, I would say it's even deeper than that. We are the biggest network and creator to ever touch down a picture.

[00:04:10]>> How much money you make on on Patreon?

[00:04:12]>> You saw it in the New York Times.

[00:04:13]>> $20 million.

[00:04:14]>> Was it accurate? You said once that the podcast space was a bubble.

[00:04:17]>> Yeah, it's popped already.

[00:04:18]>> And it's popped.

[00:04:19]>> You're going to see it crumble right now. iHeart was approached by Netflix with a really beneficial situation for iHeart to take their vodcasts and put them on a platform like Netflix. Not one at a time, a suite of >> They're signing deals off the rip.

[00:04:34]>> Yes.

[00:04:34]>> That's giving up.

[00:04:35]>> No, no, no. Stop. Don't ask the question. Yes, they are giving up their video rights.

[00:04:39]>> Off the off the rip or they don't have any yet.

[00:04:42]>> No, because they want a bigger check.

[00:04:44]What is more valuable, the experience or this check? today. You can be assured if we get behind something, it's because we believe.

[00:04:51]>> I always look at podcasting as not necessarily the content that makes money, it's the ancillary things around it.

[00:04:56]>> No, the content can make money and that's where I want to help. We're not just a media company. We're a data company. I have been collecting the data from every platform that will provide it for us for almost 10 years. We're the SNL of 2025 of this generation. Now, combine that with the fact that Joe Budden, all right, is allegedly one of the biggest money makers on Patreon. We talking potentially over a million dollars a month, tens of millions annually, huge subscription traffic, you know, one of the biggest creator ecosystems on that app. So, now my brain started thinking, you know what I'm saying? And I know the audience, you know, that I'm pretty sure they started thinking too because now the question becomes when somebody has ownership, okay, platform relationships, policy influence, and operational control over one of the biggest accounts.

[00:05:50]Where exactly does the line get drawn?

[00:05:53]Again, I'm respectfully asking. I'm not accusing nobody of anything, okay? I'm not saying anything illegal happened.

[00:06:02]I'm talking perception here because perception matters in media. See, if I'm another creator, you know, with another network, another podcaster trying to build something huge on Patreon, I might start wondering, wait, do we all get access to the same opportunities? Did every creator get offered equity? Did every creator get advisory access? Did every creator get to help shape the ecosystem they profit from? or was this one of those you got to already be inside the room to get the real deal type of situations? And that's where people start getting uncomfortable because now it starts looking like creator verse creator.

[00:06:46]And you know, it start also looking like creator plus plat plus platform power.

[00:06:53]All right? And that and that changes things. Let's be honest, Joe Button been preaching ownership for years. So from one angle, this is a success story.

[00:07:03]Okay, independent media, direct to consumer revenue, no labels, no network, no media man. I mean I mean no middleman. That's revolutionary. But from another angle, people going to naturally ask, can you know smaller creators even compete if the biggest creators are also tied to the into the platform itself?

[00:07:27]That's not hate. That's a fair question, especially when policies start affecting, you know, pay walls, membership access, you know, discoverability, refund systems.

[00:07:41]Okay, come on now. Content protection, the clipping.

[00:07:47]All right, this is serious. Because if the people helping shape the ecosystem also financially benefit from the ecosystem, people start wondering if the game is truly neutral, that's just human nature. And again, this ain't even really about Ian specifically anymore. This is about where creator economy is going. The creators are becoming executives. The executives are becoming equity holders.

[00:08:16]The platforms becoming media companies.

[00:08:19]All right. And the audience still thinks it's just podcasting.

[00:08:24]It's not just podcasting. This is corporate media with hoodies and microphones now. Okay. That's why this conversation matters because the Joe Buddy Network might be one of the first examples of creators evolving into actual platform power players.

[00:08:44]If that's the future, cool. But then we got to ask, what protections exist for everybody else trying to come up?

[00:08:55]Do all creators get a fair shot at those same opportunities? Or once certain people get inside the circle, does the circle naturally start protecting itself? Huh?

[00:09:09]I ain't going to lie.

[00:09:11]This a hell of a conversation.

[00:09:14]I want to hear from y'all.

[00:09:16]Is this just elite business strategy or does this setup create an uneven playing field for everybody else trying to build?

[00:09:26]Huh? Talk to the double rooki cuz y'all know over here we don't just scream n aers.

[00:09:35]This is real.

[00:09:39]This is real to Joe Budden network. Him and Ian, they got equity. and Patreon.

[00:09:48]Come on now. Everybody keep talking about that Charlemagne deal. Like, it's so hot and all that to be honest.

[00:09:56]Let's say for instance, you know, Patreon goes belly up.

[00:10:02]All right. And they failing and somebody tries to buy them like a Spotify or Apple.

[00:10:10]Okay. What if the What if the JBN gets a payout of something like 300 M, 400 M, something like that and then get to move over and then maybe move over into the platform or something. Who knows? That could be a little quick little bag. Let me get that little 300, 400 real quick and then they could go do what Charlemagne is doing over there at Netflix. But they got a little quick bag or they could do whatever they want to do. They could have already be in the works of starting their own little app.

[00:10:43]You know what I'm saying? They could be in the works of that. Who knows? But this is this is could be this could be major. All right. Who know? Everybody keep talking about the Charlemagne deal, but they not thinking about how lucrative this equity play that Ian and Joe Budden have created with Patreon.

[00:11:06]Let's wake it up. Look at the files. All right, it's the Daruski. You already know. Holla, >> I got D too. That's my man though. Gang gang.

[00:11:18]>> That's my man. Big dog.