Luminary had a rough start into the podcasting industry, and the company has already lost one of its executives. Co-founder Joe Purzycki has stepped down from his post as chief strategy officer. He left the position about two months after Luminary’s launch, and was replaced by Jeff Saunders, a former exec at Jet.com and now chief product officer for the podcast platform. A representative confirmed to The Verge that Saunders has expanded the engineering team since joining, but Luminary has not made any comment on its service or why Puzycki left.
The company brings a subscription model to podcasting, and its April launch sparked conversations about whether the Netflix-style approach would be beneficial to either podcasters or listeners instead of the common ad-supported model. Shortly after its debut, Luminary reportedly lost its deals with multiple major podcast networks, including PodcastOne, Barstool Sports, Gimlet Media/Anchor/Parcast, and Earwolf.