Business Insider日读新闻随记57

2019年4月28日

$100 million podcast startup Luminary has been getting blasted by top podcasters

In short, Luminary is a new app for downloading and listening to podcasts.

With $US100 million in startup capital and an ambitious plan to become the Netflix of podcasts, Luminary was off to a strong start. “We want to become synonymous with podcasting in the same way Netflix has become synonymous with streaming,” Luminary co-founder and CEO Matt Sacks said.

Amid an increasingly loud outcry from major podcast producers, Luminary has gone from a potentially huge new player in podcasting to a pariah. The difference with Luminary – and the thing that makes it comparable to Netflix – is that it pays a variety of podcast producers to make new, exclusive podcasts that are only available through Luminary.

The backlash Luminary is facing has nothing to do with the way the app functions for users, or even the high price of the monthly subscription.  The way that Luminary was linking to popular podcasts made it impossible for podcast creators to quantify how many people were getting their podcasts through Luminary. That may sound trivial, but it’s hugely important if you’re a podcast that sells advertising to pay the bills. The only way to put a dollar amount to advertising is by knowing how many people those advertisements will reach.

Whether the company is able to bring back any podcasters it might’ve alienated in the last week remains to be seen. It’s even less certain that Luminary will be able to attract paying users in a medium that’s cost nothing for its entire existence. But with $US100 million in capital, it’s clear that Luminary has room to give it a shot.

GDP growth smashed expectations at the beginning of 2019

Gross domestic product, a measure of all the goods and services produced in the country, grew at a far faster pace than expected in the first quarter. But the broad reading may have masked pockets of weakness in the economy. The factors that lifted GDP 3.2% from a year earlier aren’t expected to last. Economists said a sharp jump in exports, for example, was largely due to companies rushing orders ahead of scheduled escalations in the ongoing trade war between Washington and Beijing.

Underlying data in Friday’s report pointed to softening consumption and investment, meanwhile, supporting widespread expectations for growth to slow in the coming months. Key measures of inflation actually moved lower, with the personal consumption expenditures price index coming in well below the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%.

Real final sales to private domestic purchasers, which exclude purchases by the government, fell to six-year low at 1.3% between January and March. That was compared with 2.6% at the end of 2018 and marked a third straight quarter of decline.

One thing is for sure: there’s no way the FOMC is going to cut rates on the heels of this report. You would have to see a significant adverse shock, or several months’ worth of bad numbers, before cuts would be on the table.