After all the drama, subscription podcasts are in vogue.
Newly appointed Luminary CEO Rishi Malhotra told me “the model is working from a revenue basis” and that the service’s subscriber numbers continue to grow. There’s some evidence of this externally, too. When Apple released ain late November, Luminary was number two. The service now has “a couple hundred thousand” subscribers across platforms, Malhotra said.
Malhotra says “a more regular cadence” will start up again in April, but he believes the catalog’s existing “depth” is enough to retain and gain subscribers for the time being. The company is now prioritizing new content focused on “music, sports, and comedy.” That includes several shows from Chappelle’s Pilot Boy Productions, which has a new show launching soon and “a couple” more in development, says Luminary co-founder Matt Sacks.
Luminary got to the subscription podcast game early and didn’t make many friends with its controversial app strategy. But a few years down the road, subscription shows feel less out of place — plenty of other networks are signed up on Apple Podcasts, and a number of shows are making huge figures over on Patreon. From that perspective, Luminary has a head start in building out a rich network of subscriber-only shows. Now, it just needs to make more of them.