Meghan Markle and Prince Harry may not receive the full £18m from their contract with Spotify, a media lawyer has claimed.
The streaming platform announced last year that it would host a full-scale launch from the couple throughout 2021 but they have only produced one 35-minute podcast episode.
Speaking to Express.co.uk about the deal, media lawyer Ian Penman, who specialises in music streaming contracts, speculated that the podcasts are likely to have been less popular than Spotify and the royal couple expected.
He said: "It would not be an unfair assumption that perhaps their popularity was not as great as maybe they or indeed Spotify initially felt.
"I think you could draw a conclusion that if [Spotify] haven't exercised the option on the next episode of the podcast, then maybe they did not have the popularity that either Meghan and Harry expected or indeed Spotify anticipated."
Harry and Meghan began looking for commercial deals after they were cut off by the Prince's family following their decision to break away from all Royal duties.
The pair now live in a £11million mansion in Montecito, California.
Angela Levin, who has written a biography about the prince, said: “Harry and Meghan want to do too many things at the same time.”
After realising that the deal so far had cost them £500,000 a minute, Spotify has reportedly been left "mystified" as to why the couple have not produced any content, according to The Sun.
However, Penman explained Spotify is unlikely to have lost out because they are unlikely to have paid the full £18m upfront and are instead likely to have paid the Duke and Duchess of Sussex a small advance, retaining the right to back out of the contract if the first episode was not popular.
He said: "It's famously the case in music deals, this goes back decades, that when people talk about a large deal, like Robbie Williams signing a deal for £15m or something, it does not mean he gets £15m on day one.
"So the problem you have here, I would imagine, is that when they talk about an £18m Spotify podcast deal, it probably means that they have signed their first product, in this case a podcast - they then have many, many options for further products.
"All those options are in Spotify's favour. Make no mistake, they're not in Meghan and Harry's favour.
"If all those options are exercised, and we don't know how many podcasts that relates to, it may be that the total money spent by Spotify is £18m.
"So, have they lost any money today? Probably, not a penny."
Earlier this year, Horacio Gutierrez, Spotify's head of global affairs and chief legal officer, was grilled about the amount of money the company gave the couple at a Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee hearing.
He explained that the value of a deal is based on how many listeners they predict a podcast will get and what advertising it's likely to secure.
He didn't confirm the £18million figure reported by the Telegraph, but said "they're not doing it for free".
He said that they hoped Meghan and Harry's podcast would attract more people to the service, which would therefore lead to more listens for other shows.
