Welcome to Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts. This is issue 208, published May 7, 2019.
Luminary cleans up its show notes links situation. As has been widely reported, Luminary was until very recently removing links from the show notes of podcast episodes displayed in its apps. The broad reason given for this was “security,” a pronouncement which raised eyebrows across the podcast industry, especially since other apps (including Apple Podcasts) manage to display podcasters’ links without difficulty. The links issue was problematic because sponsor and affiliate links are often a big part of how podcasts monetize; removing them didn’t exactly help burnish the company’s credentials as a neutral podcatcher at a time when there were also question marks over its caching practices.
But according to Luminary chief strategy officer Joe Purzycki, the removal of links has now ceased. Clickable links will shortly be rolled out into Luminary’s iOS and Android apps, and will be…
