I’m on record saying I don’t care much about the royal family. In particular I don’t care about Prince Harry and his TV star wife Meghan Markle. And yet, somehow, it seems not a single month can go by without a major story about them. At least this latest story has the ring of unvarnished truth about it.

In December, 2020 Harry and Meghan signed a $25 million production deal with Spotify (later reports say it was $20 million). Given the amount of money involved, Spotify clearly felt they were going to be getting a lot of compelling content from the couple. Just to give you an idea how compelling, here’s their 2020 statement about their love of podcasting.

In a joint statement, the royal couple said, “What we love about podcasting is that it reminds all of us to take a moment and to really listen, to connect to one another without distraction. With the challenges of 2020, there has never been a more important time to do so, because when we hear each other, and hear each other’s stories, we are reminded of how interconnected we all are.”

That has to be the most generic statement about podcasting ever written. Jump forward a full year later to January of 2022 and the couple had produced exactly one podcast that was about 30 minutes long.

So far, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have only released one podcast as part of that contract, a 33-minute holiday special in December 2020, featuring their son Archie’s first public words and sonic cameos from a wide array of stars, including Stacey Abrams, Christina Adane, José Andrés, Brené Brown, Rachel Cargle, Deepak Chopra, James Corden, Matt Haig, Sir Elton John, Hussain Manawer, Naomi Osaka, Tyler Perry, and George the Poet. At the time of the podcast’s release, many outlets reported that the first complete series from Archewell Audio was expected to be released in 2021, however, that never came to fruition.

At the time, Spotify was reportedly hiring a bunch of employees to help the couple create some content. Finally in the late summer of 2022, Spotify released Meghan’s long awaited podcast called Archetypes. The show consisted of 13 episodes ranging from an hour to 90 minutes long. Each one features celebrity guests taking about “the labels that try to hold women back.” For instance there’s an episode titled: “Breaking down the Bimbo with Paris Hilton and Iliza Shlesinger.”

And that really was the extent of their effort over two years. So it’s not surprising to learn that Spotify and the royal couple have parted ways.

“Spotify and Archewell Audio have mutually agreed to part ways and are proud of the series we made together,” Spotify and Archewell Audio announced Thursday, without elaborating on why they decided to pull the plug.

The deal ends less than a year after Markle’s debut podcast, “Archetypes,” first aired. The segments dug into “the labels that try to hold women back,” according to its description on the platform, with Markle’s guests including Serena Williams, Mariah Carey and Mindy Kaling.

A former economist at Spotify estimated that the couple earned more from this deal that the top streaming song of all time (Blinding Lights by The Weeknd has been streamed more than 3.3 billion times). However, the Wall Street Journal reported that the couple may not get the full $20 million because there were productivity clauses in their contract. Finally, a site called Podnews reported this: “Podnews has heard from multiple sources that some interviews on the show were done by other staffers, with her questions edited-in afterwards.”

The only surprising thing about any of this is that an executive at Spotify, who hosts his own podcast, blasted the couple in very blunt terms, calling them “grifters.”

“I wish I had been involved in the ‘Meghan and Harry leave Spotify’ negotiation,” [Bill] Simmons said on his self-titled podcast Friday.

“‘The F**king Grifters.’ That’s the podcast we should have launched with them. I have got to get drunk one night and tell the story of the Zoom I had with Harry to try and help him with a podcast idea. It’s one of my best stories … F**k them. The grifters.”

Apparently, this isn’t the first time Simmons had taken a shot at them.

“What does he do? It’s one of those things where it’s like, what’s your talent? Why are we listening to you? So you were born in a royal family and then you left … You live in f**king Montecito and you just like, you sell documentaries and podcasts and nobody cares what you have to say about anything unless you talk about the royal family and you just complain about them.”

It’s pretty hard to argue with any of that. I genuinely continue to wonder why anyone cares about these two. Maybe this disaster of a deal with Spotify will clue in other companies that getting into the ex-royal promotion business with Harry and Meghan is not a good idea.