bookbinder

https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/04/luminarys-rough-launch-continues-as-another-high-profile-podcast-asks-to-be-removed-from-its-app/

Various podcasters and podcast networks (including Joe Rogan, New York Times, etc.) have asked Luminary to remove their shows from the app. And I don't understand why any company would comply with such a request.

The Niemanlab article refers to licensing issues, but how can a publicly available podcast have licensing issues? The whole point of a podcast is to be platform agnostic. Anyone can build a directory and/or app that features any podcast under the sun. So why is Luminary so special?

I understand that podcasters object to the company's ad-free/premium business-model, but why would any podcaster believe that they have the right to ban an app from accessing their publicly available content? Moreoever, why would Luminary honour these requests?

Google Discussions appeared to be a widely used and well liked product and then one day it disappeared. What happened?

I'm interested in record labels, repositories/platforms, etc.

Examples

https://freemusicarchive.org/ http://magnatune.com/ https://bandcamp.com

There used to be lots of sites that would list webmaster freebies and web tools, but they seem to harder to find these days. Anyone got any suggestions?

Imgur, Pinboard and PlentofFish come to mind. But I would like to find more examples. (I would appreciate links to relevant articles/interviews.)

I want to better understand why some startups able to grow traffic without hiring staff (whereas other startups seem to hire an army of people from day one).