Luminary unveils new, lower, pricing

• EXCLUSIVE: Premium podcast service Luminary has announced new pricing: a significantly cheaper monthly plan: down from US$7.99 to $4.99, and a new annual plan at US$34.99 (about $2.99 a month). The company tells Podnews that the new prices are “based on the success of Luminary’s holiday promotion, our latest consumer research, and data insights about the evolving streaming content ecosystem”. International pricing has also been reduced: the pricing is available in the app now.

  • The company has also announced returning shows from Trevor Noah, Lena Dunham, Roxane Gay & Tressie McMillan Cottom, Russell Brand, and more. “We also have new original shows debuting with Soledad O’Brien, Alex Gibney, Franklin Leonard, and Evan Narcisse, with more 2020 content to be announced soon.”

• Podverse is a new-to-us app on the web, iOS and Android, that “makes it easy to create, share, and discover full-length clips from your favorite podcasts”. The code is fully open source, and there are premium features for $10/year. (The Podnews podcast is on Podverse).

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Aug 20 2023

• Designed to honour audio fiction producers, the Audio Verse awards has announced winners for 2019. “The titans of modern audio drama have shown themselves capable of not only using audio to create new stories that have emotional impact, but even inspire their listeners to tell their own stories.”

• Cadence13 is to launch a podcast with Dr Brené Brown, a researcher and author. Meanwhile, Ireland’s 'collaborative hub for the creative and the curious’, HeadStuff is to launch a slate of new podcasts for 2020.

  
  Aug 20 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Matriarch Digital Media is a network of podcasts where women “can be understood, encouraged and uplifted”, says the Star Tribune in Minneapolis.

Get the free Podnews newsletter for more like this

Get it free

• New book: Make Noise, a creator’s guide to podcasting and great audio storytelling, by Eric Nuzum, is now available from Workman Publishing. Today, our Editor reviews it: “You should rush out and grab a copy today. It’s a great investment, and will help you produce your best work.”

Tips and tricks - with Acast Open

• If you’re making podcasts for businesses, don’t just judge success by the downloads, says Yi Jing Fly - there’s something much more important, she argues, using Dell and Netflix as examples.

• Jack Rhysider looks at the growth of his podcast, and suspects that 150 fans will be enough to make it grow: but you can do much more.

Podcasts

Sam Walker, a former BBC radio presenter, changed her life from living in drizzly Manchester to take her family to the desert in Phoenix AZ, USA. Sam Walker’s Desert Diaries promises “excitement, frustration, fear, joy, loneliness and scorpions”. (Libsyn)

The Baron of Botox tells the stranger-than-fiction story of an extraordinary doctor: the dermatologist to the stars Fredric Brandt, and his relationship with botox, collagen, and other skin treatments. (Imperative Entertainment / Endeavor Audio / Megaphone)

Shane Whaley, the host of Tourpreneur, a podcast series and daily email briefing focused on the real-life stories of tour operators and the kind of information that matters to them, is interviewed about his career pivot from being a sales executive to podcaster.

The GeekWire podcast has, in a recent edition, a discussion about the future of podcasting. Taking part: Phyllis Fletcher, senior editor for podcasts at American Public Media; Steve Henn, the head of content strategy for audio news at Google; David Payne, the president of Rainstream Media; and Amira Valliani, CEO and co-founder of Glow.