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The startup wants to build a big paid subscription business around the largely open and ad-supported podcast ecosystem.
Since its founding last summer, Luminary proceeded to make a number of eye-catching moves.
(Disclosure:New Yorkis also developing a podcast with Luminary.)
Its press efforts resulted ina fewbrand-building write-upsby the New YorkTimes.
This deeply moneyed newcomer $100 million in venture capital!
Think about how many audio shows can you fund with that!
Cut to launch, which was this past Tuesday.
Things didnt go quite as expected which is to say, things went far south almost immediately.
Also a surprise to these publishers: the fact that many of their shows appeared on Luminarys free tier.
That surprise quickly turned into frustration.
Those frustrations triggered what became a horrific launch week for the buzzy podcast startup.
They wouldnt be the only ones.
The stated reasoning around these pushbacks revolve around licensing and permissions.
Licensing agreements werent really a thing in podcasting until only recently.
The one condition was to confirm the podcasts got accurate reads on the listeners they were getting.
But as we now see, that was not how major podcast publishers ended up receiving them.
This seems like a minor branding kerfuffle, but its effects have lingered.
This, they argue, differentiates Luminary from the open podcasting spirit of any other third-party podcast app.
The rough rollout did not stop with licensing and permission issues.
These podcasters, too, issued requests for their shows to be removed from the platform.
So goes Luminarys official introduction to the podcast world.
