Earlier this month, The Verge reported that Luminary has been going through some changes. Luminary debuted in April of 2019. Two months after that launch, co-founder Joe Purzycki stepped down as chief strategy officer.

Luminary replaced Joe Purzycki with Jeff Saunders, who is now Luminary’s chief product officer. Previously, Jeff Saunders was the VP of product and technology at Jet.com.

Luminary has gotten itself into a bit of controversy in part by not making what they were doing absolutely clear. In April of this year, Podnews reported that Luminary had been running a proxy server for podcasts, breaking podcast analytics and making dynamic ad insertion difficult.

Podnews also stated that Luminary had been criticized for removing links in show notes, including the removal of donation links, and truncating show notes. According to Podnews, Luminary also removed all main website links for podcasts and was incorrectly crediting show creators. The Verge points out that both of those issues have since been fixed.

The Verge also noted that canceling a Luminary subscription is a confusing process. People who have tried to delete their accounts discovered that Luminary requires them to switch to a free account. This means that people who no longer want a Luminary account are forced to still have an account – one that does not give them access to Luminary’s exclusive shows.

Personally, I find that Luminary’s decision to prevent people from being able to entirely leave Luminary troubling. Healthy companies allow disgruntled customers to separate when they choose to. It is especially disturbing from a company that started adding podcasts to its platform without asking the podcasters for permission to do so.