Australian podcasters Ryan Jon Dunn and Toni Lodge have signed a lucrative deal with global audio streaming platform Spotify.

The deal, believed to be a multiyear, multimillion-dollar contract, positions the Melbourne-produced podcast Toni & Ryan in the Spotify “originals and exclusives” stable, joining the platform’s other top-rating podcasts The Joe Rogan Experience, Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Archewell Audio, and the podcast of former US first lady Michelle Obama.

The Australian duo launched Toni & Ryan last August, but in less than a year it has amassed a huge audience. In February it clocked 1.3 million downloads in a single month, while in March it pushed past 5 million downloads in total.

Despite its limited resources – the podcast was self-produced by Dunn and Lodge, who write all the material themselves – by early 2022 it was in the top 10 podcasts on Spotify, and the top 20 on Apple.

Though the daily podcast is acutely Australian (the pair often discuss everyday things like Australian supermarkets and retail brands) its audience is predominantly outside Australia.

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One-third of its listeners are from Australia, while the rest are international, mainly from the US and Britain. According to Dunn, 72 per cent of the audience is already listening on Spotify.

One of the show’s peculiarities was the source of its budget: the crowd-funding platform Patreon. Its supporters are known as TARP-ers, an acronym taken from the words “Toni and Ryan podcast”, and they have become an involved and loyal community.

The pair announced the deal to their listeners in a podcast episode uploaded on Monday. An official announcement from Spotify is expected this week.