Welcome to Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts. This is issue 206, published April 30, 2019.
Luminary, seven days in. It’s been a full week since Luminary officially rolled out into the marketplace, and what a maelstrom it’s been. I’m sure many of you have been following the incremental updates as they spilled out into the open, but for the benefit of those who didn’t, let quickly recap to get us all of the same page.
When last Tuesday’s Hot Pod went out, the big headline had been the pre-launch pullouts of The Daily and Spotify’s various podcasting assets from the platform. The Verge, which broke the story, framed the move as the first overt sparks of some budding platform war. I didn’t fully share the interpretation, believing it to be more rooted in a procedural pushback over licensing and lack thereof.
Since this time last week, Luminary’s rough rollout has worsened in multiple directions. To begin with, several other major podcast publishers followed The…
