First, if Rogan is doing this deal then he values himself at less than whatever they paid. I am assuming he has a fairly good understanding of that worth is (the guy has worked in media for a very long time) given that he knows what he earns, and the author doesn't/
Second, the value of these kind of audiences is pretty much always over-estimated. Spotify is way overvaluing Rogan's worth, and the author is way overvaluing Rogan's worth too. No, there isn't a huge subscription business here (Stern doesn't have one, people buy Sirius subs). Can you make money from podcast subscriptions? Yes. Should you? No.
Third, most of these media-ish companies don't think about this in a very sophisticated way (as Rogan's quote at the end demonstrates). They are desperate to create growth at any cost, they seldom focus on product or think about customer/supplier value, and usually have execs with bureaucratic/big media ways of thinking (which is useless for growth). I suspect this will be more Ninja and Mixer than Stern/Sirius...they have bought some listeners great...but unless they buy literally every podcast, their platform isn't growing (it is actually very like Twitch, what incentive does any podcaster have to move onto Spotify and make them rich...it is a ludicrous insight into the level of thought that goes into these huge, expensive deals...now Ninja is streaming to a few thousand rather than 30k...genius play Microsoft).
Fourth, the stuff about Spotify not having editorial control is not true. I don't know who is fooling who here but this is like Facebook acquiring WhatsApp and saying they are going to show ads...LOOOOOL. Spotify is a content company, if Facebook gets blamed for what other people right on their platform then Spotify is going to get hammered when Rogan (inevitably) does something unwise.