When he joined me on stage at Thursday’s Hot Pod Summit, Matt Sacks — CEO of Luminary, the forthcoming exclusives-driven podcast startup that aspires to be the oh-you-know-who of podcasts — couldn’t/wouldn’t say much in the way of specifics. But we ended up getting a lot of those Sunday night, when the much-talked-about company kicked off a soft launch and its first public-facing press push through a flashy New York Times writeup. Let’s go over the details.
1. A Luminary subscription will cost $8 a month — so, lower than the cheapest tier for Netflix and Audible ($8.99 and $14.95, respectively), but higher than Stitcher Premium ($4.99).
2. Despite the March press push (presumably timed for SXSW), the service isn’t expected to actually roll out until June. That’s pretty far away, and I’ve been told that it’s somewhat uncommon for a startup to exit stealth mode this before its actual launch. A curious choice.
3. The service will start off with more than 40…
