Search for ‘Megaphone’

22.7% of shows started on Spotify for Creators in January haven’t posted a new episode since the end of February - that’s better than the average, as is 20.4% for Ausha, 18.9% for Megaphone, 12.6% for Podbean and 12.3% for Libsyn. As you’d expect, podcast hosting companies with well-publicised free trials show the highest levels of podfade, including Spreaker (40%), RSS (71%) and Hubhopper (83%).

Eligibility for the Spotify Partner Program requires you to use Spotify for Creators to host your podcast (or Megaphone in some cases); and you need at least twelve episodes, 2,000 unique Spotify users in the last month, and 10,000 streamed hours in the last month. (YouTube, by comparison, needs 1,000 all-time subscribers, but 4,000 streamed hours in the last year.)

Adam Fruscella is now Director of Advertising Sales at RedCircle. He joins from Paramount, Spotify and Megaphone.

Libsyn has announced a new CEO - and it’s an impressive hire: the co-founder and former CEO of podcast host Megaphone, Brendan Monaghan. Megaphone was bought by Spotify in Nov 2020; Monaghan left the company in Feb 2022.

Exclusive: Spotify is to close the podcast analytics platform Chartable, as part of a re-focus at the company. Chartable users will receive an email a little later today detailing next steps. The tool, bought by Spotify in Feb 2022, offered “SmartLinks and SmartPromos” attribution tools; which we reported in 2022 were to be incorporated into Megaphone. That’s still the plan for Megaphone-hosted customers; though Spotify has also recently announced generally available attribution tools similar to SmartLinks for the Spotify app. Chartable’s co-founder Dave Zohrob left Spotify in July; Spotify’s other purchase at the time, Podsights, was integrated into Spotify Ad Analytics in June last year.

The podcast argues that expensive shows like Serial are dying, while cheap celebrity chatcasts are not; that a small number of shows get disproportionate amounts of money, and that things like the “BBC Sounds” proprietary app or the NYT Audio app are trying to kill open RSS. You can read a transcript here. (Slate, or its host Megaphone, doesn’t follow the open standard so the transcript isn’t in the podcast feed).

Buzzsprout has achieved the latest IAB Podcast Measurement Guidelines compliance to v2.2. Megaphone achieved v2.2 in late July; Captivate and Audiomeans are the only other podcast hosting companies to be compliant with the latest standard.

Thank you to Andy Bowers who became a personal supporter this week. Co-founder of Spooler, and previous co-founder of Megaphone, founder of Slate Podcasts and Pinna, we’re proud of his support. Thank you! You can become like Andy here.

Megaphone has overtaken Triton Digital’s Omny Studio as the #4 biggest podcast host, according to total episode share in August measured by Livewire. Spreaker continues to take more episode share at #2; Spotify for Podcasters is still #1, though has lost almost a quarter of its market share this year.

Edison Research published the top 25 podcasts in the UK for Q2/24. It was Goalhanger’s time to shine - The Rest is Politics remained at #4, with TRI Football and TRI History both gaining in the charts, and TRI Entertainment a new entry at #17. It’s also the first time that a BBC podcast has made it into the top 10 (in this General Election period, Newscast made it to #9). Acast and Megaphone both host 8 of the top 25; the BBC have five.

Statistics in your podcast host - We asked a variety of podcast hosts. Ausha, Buzzsprout and Spreaker will correctly list this as Apple Podcasts. Omny Studio lists this separately as an Apple Podcasts website play. Captivate, Podbean, Megaphone, Spotify for Podcasters and RSS.com will list this as a browser (Chrome, Firefox, etc).

Edison Research revealed the Top 50 Podcasts in the US measured by weekly audience (and done through a survey, so every podcast gets measured). There’s no change in the top three: The Daily at #3, Crime Junkie at #2 and Joe Rogan at #1. 24 shows are hosted on Megaphone; 9 on Simplecast.

Megaphone is now IAB certified under v2.2, says an email to customers. They’re the second company to certify to the new v2.2 standards; the first was Captivate. Megaphone was one of three Spotify companies who quietly withdrew from IAB certification at the beginning of the year, as Podnews reported in April; after criticism from customers, that decision was changed in early June.

Other certified companies are at v2.1; Spotify’s Megaphone plans to returning to the IAB under v2.2 compliance. Here’s more about podcast statistics.

Always interesting to check in on our page showing podcasters switching their show to a different podcast host. Over the last thirty days, the biggest winners are Megaphone, Spotify for Podcasters, and Acast. The biggest losers are Spreaker, SoundCloud and Libsyn.

We’re hearing that some Megaphone customers are experiencing significant delays in monetisation approvals for new shows. The company normally has a 30 day waiting period; but publishers suggest a longer delay, resulting in lost revenue.

Ausha has achieved ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification for security of customer data. It appears to be the first hosting platform to receive it; Podbean, Chartable, Megaphone, Riverside and Veritonic all have SOC 2 Type II certification, a US equivalent.

Exclusive: Spotify’s Megaphone is working to be recertified to the IAB Podcast Measurement Guidelines. Earlier this year, Podnews revealed that the company had pulled out of IAB membership, and its companies had been removed from IAB’s certification program. Now, in a welcome move, the company’s enterprise podcast hosting platform Megaphone says it is working to regain certification. A Spotify spokesperson told Podnews: “We have remained committed to IAB's mission, have maintained compliance with the IAB guidelines, and are currently working with the IAB on the v2.2 certification of the Megaphone platform.”

“Decisions in their best interest vs yours“: Sounds Profitable’s Bryan Barletta has written a strongly-worded article against Spotify. In it, he criticises the decision for Megaphone and Chartable to no longer be certified to IAB Podcast Measurement Guidelines; and criticises the decision to remove minimum pricing for the Spotify Ad Network. He suggests publishers call for IAB recertification, and actively investigate moving away from Megaphone for the benefit of the industry. “Walled garden solutions don’t require IAB Podcast Certification, after all.”

Spotify’s Megaphone podcast host, which is no longer IAB certified, has sent an email to publishers with the news that they will no longer be able to set minimum prices, or “price floors”, for ads sold by the Spotify Audience Network (SPAN). “The current ad ecosystem on Megaphone operates as a waterfall, with each ad request hitting direct-sold, then SPAN, then VAST/programmatic,” explains podcast ad-tech newsletter The Download: its publisher Bryan Barletta says the move may let SPAN take more inventory, and prevents a publisher from maximising their revenue.

Edison Research has published its Top 50 Podcasts in the US for Q1 2024. There’s a new entry at #4: New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce. Our list includes hosts (Megaphone host 22 of the top 50) and links to each, with trailers where posted.

One of the first shows from Max Cutler's PAVE Studios, Murder: True Crime Stories is new today from Crime House. A true crime show investigating the death of an intern in Washington DC, it's hosted on Megaphone; and its name is classic Parcast.

EXCLUSIVE: Spotify is no longer a member of the IAB, having quietly ceased its membership in the last three months. After a press enquiry from Podnews, Spotify’s Megaphone, Chartable and the Spotify for Podcasters host formerly known as Anchor were removed from the published list of compliant companies for podcast measurement. They last underwent certification in 2020.

AdsWizz has successfully recertified for v2.1 of the IAB Podcast Measurement program. Podtrac and Simplecast also recertified in March. On the IAB TechLab website, there are still a number of companies only certified to v2.0, who haven’t recertified in more than three years: Anchor (now Spotify), Buzzsprout, Captivate, Chartable, Libsyn, Megaphone and Podbean.

A significant jump for Spreaker is seen in the share of new podcast episodes in March, according to Livewire. Spreaker’s use of Podping, a simple mechanism to advertise new published episodes, may be the reason why. Podbean overtook Spotify’s Megaphone to claim #6.

Correction: Yesterday, we said that the Locked On Podcast Network were represented by Libsyn Ads before they signed with Adswizz. We based this on a page on the Libsyn Ads website which sold “a full network buy” of the Locked On Network. That page was deleted after we published yesterday; and both companies say that Locked On did not work with Libsyn Ads, so we clearly got things wrong and we regret the error. We’re told they were with Spotify/Megaphone.

Choses à Savoir, one of the biggest podcast networks in France, has signed with Acast. They were with Spotify’s Megaphone.

The most-listened-to podcast in the world, The Joe Rogan Experience, has switched podcast host - from Spotify for Podcasters to Spotify’s enterprise host, Megaphone.

Meanwhile, Ashley Carman writes about US podcasting’s strange double-life: as employee negotiations appear to fail and layoffs continue, big shows are hawking themselves for big money - Alex Cooper is trying to find a buyer for Call Her Daddy (currently with Spotify), and is seeking a nine-figure deal; and Jason and Travis Kelce’s New Heights, a Wave Sports & Entertainment show that is on Spotify’s Megaphone, is also looking for a buyer.

Spotify’s Megaphone is now an associate member of ACPM, one of France’s podcast measurement services. ACPM’s January 2024 numbers show the top ten publishers increased downloads by 14.9% year-on-year - Android has more than a 70% market share in the country, so no iOS 17 issues there.

Spotify’s Megaphone is looking for more inventory for political advertising this year, aiming to take advantage of a predicted election spend across all media of over $15bn. Podcasters who block political categories won’t get that incremental revenue, the company is saying to publishers via email.

Somewhat surprisingly, he’s hosting on Spotify for Podcasters, rather than Megaphone. (His old Libsyn feed redirects here, too).

Megaphone is rolling out new reporting tools, tabs and filters; and more charts are planned. They’re rolling out now.

Ten podcast companies are still not certified for the latest version of the IAB’s podcast measurement guidelines v2.1, in spite of being asked to do so by the end of 2022. More than a year later, the IAB’s list of compliant companies still shows AdsWizz, Anchor (now Spotify), Buzzsprout, Captivate, Chartable, Libsyn, Megaphone, Podbean, Podtrac and Simplecast as only compliant to v2.0 of the guidelines, something that means “they will lose current status”, according to the IAB Tech Lab.

There were 1.7mn new podcast episodes in December (down 11.1%), says Livewire. Spotify for Podcasters hosted 30.4% of them, a new record for the company. Omny Studio dropped below Spotify’s Megaphone for the first time.

Warner Bros Discovery is to partner with Spotify’s Megaphone and SPAN for podcast distribution and monetisation. Other WBD podcasts signed with Acast in September.

We don’t yet know where the cuts are coming from, though this message from Megaphone’s support team is ominous.

Podnews has published Apple's top shows for 14 different countries, and analysed the results. From the 140 awarded shows, "true crime" and "culture" were the most popular categories. Megaphone hosts the most popular shows, with 15; Simplecast and Acast both host 13. The Huberman Lab was the only show to have made it to three country lists. You can also compare the lists from 2022.

Spotify's Megaphone published its Podcast Trends 2023 report. The data shows significant growth in podcast listening by older listeners: in Italy, people aged 55-64 are listening twice as long as last year; in the US total time spent listening for 55-64s has increased by 50%, and by 49% for those over 65.

On Friday, we carried feedback from Megaphone customers that all data was lost about podcasts within Megaphone when moving to Spotify's "streaming-powered tools", which offer new analytics.

Megaphone's "streaming-powered tools" Spotify migration is in test for some users. It offers content and ad performance analytics, and clickable promos. However, we're told that publishers who enable it lose access to all data about those podcasts within Megaphone, and must now log in to Spotify Ad Analytics to see downloads and streams. We're also told this data appears to be gone from Megaphone's export log service. Another customer tells us it's also likely to mean lower ad delivery figures.

Spotify's enterprise podcast hosting company Megaphone is testing "streaming-powered tools for Spotify", enabling users to upload proprietary video podcasts to Spotify, gain enhanced reporting, and cross-promote podcasts in "clickable promos". Selected users tell us they're seeing announcements and an invitation.

Launched Sept 2020 in Podnews, NPR ends localised versions of the Consider This podcast this week, which they claimed at the time was the "first localised daily news podcast". Localisation "did not prove sustainable", said a spokesperson; Current reports that the production process wasn't scalable; audiences didn't value it much anyway; and NPR is moving to Megaphone which means the use of different tools. Consider This continues, with national content (featuring anchors like Mary Louise Kelly, above)

Spotify's Megaphone launched a new Spotify Audience Network Performance Dashboard.

The number of episodes published (on open RSS) by Spotify for Podcasters, formerly Anchor, dipped to a new low last month says Livewire; but it still hosts one out of every five new episodes; and Spotify's Megaphone also posted another record high. The biggest increases were seen by Omny Studio and its owner Triton Digital.

Amazon Cloudfront saw its lowest market share in podcast delivery for over a year. Squarespace switched their traffic from Akamai to Fastly. Highwinds was the highest climber: it's used by Spotify's Megaphone and by Captivate, among others.

TWiT is switching away from Spotify - the company is now using Podscribe, and is testing Libsyn's AdvertiseCast instead of Megaphone. "Advertisecast has a higher fill rate, plus we hope to partner with them on the host-read ads side of our business," says Lisa Laporte.

Above - watching our podcast host migration tool, you'll often see shows migrating to Spotify's Megaphone. Working with an investor, we've learnt that since early 2021, Podnews's sample data shows that Spotify's Megaphone has migrated at least 2,428 shows to its network from other hosting companies: representing shows with a total of 131 million listeners. The number of shows being migrated in our sample continues to increase; though the shows transferring recently have fewer listeners.

BBC Sounds has announced a set of new shows, and that the BBC is to work with Spotify's Megaphone to "recommend relevant content to audiences on other podcast platforms in the UK". The deal means that Spotify's Megaphone will programmatically schedule trailers, for UK listeners, on BBC shows carried on third-party platforms. The BBC has confirmed to Podnews that this does not affect the BBC's deal with Acast for monetising their shows outside the UK.

Goalhanger Podcasts is to switch to Spotify's Megaphone and the Spotify Audience Network. The company is currently with Acast, and produces some of the largest shows in the UK including The Rest Is Politics. The companies will jointly announce their new relationship at The Podcast Show in London tomorrow.

In the Podnews Weekly Review this week, we hear from two different companies doing "broadcast to podcast" - Triton's Omny Studio and Spotify's Megaphone. Plus, we get a preview of the Podcast Show 2023 in London.

Spotify for Podcasters posted its second-highest share of new episodes, growing 13% since January. Spotify's Megaphone has also continued to grow.

Spotify's Megaphone had a playback fault yesterday for a short while. It was the second playback issue this month.

First look: Spotify's Megaphone has launched its own broadcast-to-podcast technology tools. Building on the toolset it bought in its acquisition of Whooshkaa in Dec 2021, the radio-to-podcast tools are already in use by FOX News Audio.

Meanwhile, Spotify's Megaphone had a playback fault overnight. It's all fixed now.

Spotify for Podcasters increased its share in March to 23.1% of all new episodes: a six month high for the podcast host formerly known as Anchor. Spotify's Megaphone also posted an all-time high. At #3, iHeart's Spreaker saw a dramatic increase from 5.4% to 6.5%, perhaps due to a misleading announcement that the platform was "now free" (it was just a small tweak on already existing free accounts). Buzzsprout remains at #2.

Spotify and NPR are detailing their new partnership in a post highlighting how the two companies are "forging a new partnership focused on diversification and discoverability". The major partnership was announced last week at Spotify's Stream On event and Podcast Movement Evolutions.

Brendan Monaghan, the former CEO of Spotify's Megaphone, is now CEO of a car repair company. He left Megaphone a year ago.

Immediate Media Co is to join the Spotify Audience Network and will switch to Megaphone. The company was with Acast.

Last month, Buzzsprout saw a market share growth of almost a percentage point, according to John Spurlock's LiveWire. RSS·com overtook iVoox to become the #9 biggest podcast hosting company, as measured by total new episodes published; Megaphone overtook Soundcloud to reach #7.

Chartable co-founder Dave Zohrob is now Product Director for Spotify's enterprise podcast tools - leading the product team for Megaphone, the Spotify Audience Network, and Chartable.

Audioboom has announced a set of new content partnerships, including The Tim Dillon Show (ex Megaphone), Myths and Legends (ex Omny Studio), The Minds of Madness (ex ART19), The Nateland Podcast (ex Omny Studio) and Celebrity Memoir Book Club (ex Buzzsprout).

Spotify's enterprise podcast host, Megaphone, was not delivering podcasts over the weekend. A "content delivery issue" on Saturday, which caused publishers to be unable to upload audio, was followed by "podcast playback issues" on Sunday. Podcasts were unavailable on various listener apps; a problem that appeared to take around twelve hours to fix. One Megaphone podcaster described it to us as a "major outage"; it is the sixth this year.

Spotify has published its 2022 Podcast Trends Report. "If 2021 was a story of content explosion, then 2022 is one of diversification", the company says. Other than the details above from Megaphone, the data says:

Data: Spotify's Anchor continues to lose market share: it was down to 21.6% of all new podcast episodes in November. However, Spotify's overall market share remains the same after Megaphone posted the biggest share increase in the top 15 podcast hosts.

Spotify's Anchor continued to lose market share in October: it is now responsible for 21.9% of all new podcast episodes, a fall of 0.3%. Spotify's Megaphone saw a rise of 0.2%.

Keep It Light Media, Parenting Hell's, um, parent network with additional titles like Alan Carr's Life's a Beach and Wolf and Owl, is moving to Megaphone and joining the Spotify Audience Network. Those shows remain available everywhere; they were with Global's DAX.

Spotify has added free access to Podsights and Chartable for Megaphone customers in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. The company has also announced that Reach plc is the latest publisher to join Megaphone and the Spotify Audience Network.

Spotted: The Ramsey Network switched from Libsyn to Megaphone a few months ago. Flagship The Ramsey Show reached a billion downloads in Mar 21.

Spotify's Megaphone, a podcast hosting company, was down again for two hours yesterday. It was previously down on Sep 2, in early August, and in May it broke for nine hours.

Megaphone's integration with Podsights and Chartable is scheduled for September 19, according to the company's website. The company's announcement just said "September".

Megaphone clients will get free access to both Chartable audience insights and the starter plan for Podsights ad attribution from September, Spotify has announced.

Megaphone had some issues with delivering podcast audio for a short time on Monday.

Jeremy Weiner is now Acast's US Agency Partnerships Director. He joined Acast last November from Megaphone.

Livewire has published its top ten podcast hosts (by new episodes) data: Megaphone has climbed above iVoox to reach #8. You can now buy daily access to the data. Livewire also reports that Amazon Cloudfront powers just over 50% of all podcast hosting; if AWS falls over, half of all podcasts will too. We'd report on it when that happens, but we use AWS too, so :shrug:

SECURITY ADVISORY: If you are a podcast host or directory, and have any redirects or links pointing to panoply(dot)fm feeds or websites, we would suggest removing them to protect your visitors (and your SEO). Spotify, which now owns Panoply - now known as Megaphone - allowed this domain name to lapse earlier this year, and it has been purchased by a company that hosts viruses and malware. We've removed all links.

After being purchased by Spotify at the end of last year, podcast host Whooshkaa is to close on Aug 31. Podcast hosting customers are being invited to migrate to Megaphone.

Our hosts changes page (we removed the ceased podcasts from there, which confused the graph) shows a large amount of shows switching from Anchor to Megaphone.

Oldest Podcast Guest Corner: On Monday, we featured 'the oldest podcast guest of all time', a 92 year-old. Yesterday, we heard of another podcast guest aged 98. But in 2018, the record was really set, it appears: Swedish podcast Framgångspodden interviewed the then 105 year-old Dagny Carlsson, the world's "oldest blogger", in this episode. Dagny passed away in March this year, so could have been interviewed later by another podcast, too... (thanks, Pelle!)

One of podcasting's largest hosting companies, Megaphone, was down for more than nine hours. All the Spotify-owned company's audio and RSS feeds disappeared at 8pm Eastern on Monday, after a certificate expired. In our tests, the feeds were restored at 5.39am Eastern this morning; the status page notes it fixed at 5.54am. Spotify hasn't returned our requests for comment.

CuriousCast, Corus Entertainment's podcast network, is to monetise through Megaphone. The network was hosting with Omny Studio.

Chartable has clarified its future, in an email to users. The company will be focused on publisher tools and analytics, it says; it'll be available within Megaphone, but tools and insights will also be available to all publishers, whoever they host with. The company was bought by Spotify in February.

Podbean appears to be seeing a large number of migrations away from the service, according to our sample: a large amount making their way to Anchor. Worthwhile also noting AfterBuzzTV switching from Anchor to Megaphone; and our sample continuing to see iHeart podcasts shifting from Spotify's Megaphone to iHeart's Omny Studio.

iHeartRadio appears to be switching from Spotify's Megaphone to Omny Studio, according to our host changes page. Omny Studio is owned by Triton Digital, which in turn is owned by iHeartMedia.

From Monday, Spotify's Megaphone will no longer deliver podcasts to listeners in Russia.

The company has signed Bababam and Choses à Savoir onto their podcast platform Megaphone. The publishers, two of the biggest in France, will be early testers of the Spotify Audience Network in the country.

In our sample, we observed Buzzsprout losing 27 podcasts last week, and Libsyn losing 14. The podcast hosts gaining the most were, as they always are, Anchor and Megaphone; though Simplecast and Acast also saw a good number of migrations.

In podcast representation deals, The FOX Audio Network has signed a hosting and advertising deal with Megaphone. A number of the company's shows were with Triton Digital's Omny Studio … BuzzFeed Studios has signed with Acast to launch a podcast slate of six shows; BuzzFeed also has shows with Anchor and iHeartRadio … Acast has signed Scott McGillivray, a "prolific expert in real estate" and TV star, for season three of The Real Estate Rebel … and AdLarge has signed Going West, a "top-ranked true-crime podcast".

A new podcast platform, Spooler, has launched. It's founded by a who's who of podcasting, including CEO James O. Boggs, formerly Head of Podcasts at Apple; CCO Andy Bowers, co-founder of Slate Audio and Megaphone; CTO Dan Benjamin, founder of Fireside·fm and the 5by5 podcast network, and Exec Producer Kerry Donahue, former EP at WNYC. The product claims to be a new modular content management system for audio, allowing instant edits and re-ordering of content while being compatible with RSS podcast apps. The tech also incorporates Dolby·io to smooth audio volumes and apply noise reduction. Axios has more information.

Chartable's "audience insights and cutting-edge promotional tools, SmartLinks and SmartPromos" will be folded into Megaphone, and as we understand it, will not be available to non-Megaphone customers in future. Chartable, which has 11 staff, has published a blog post.

When publishing a show to Spotify, you are now reminded to read the platform rules; though not to explicitly agree to them. Megaphone also promotes the same rules in its dashboard. The rules link here (and, of course, we'll monitor them for changes).

Spotify has purchased another podcast hosting company: Australia's Whooshkaa. The first non-US podcast host to achieve IAB certification, Whooshkaa also has technology that automatically makes podcasts from radio broadcasts. It will be integrated into Megaphone.

Data: Around 425,000 new episodes were published on Anchor in November, but the company lost 0.7% market share. In the top ten, the top 8 remains unchanged; Captivate is new at #9, beating Megaphone which remains at #10. (Podnews's Editor is an advisor for Captivate).

Jeremy Weiner has been hired as Group Business Director, East Coast for Acast in the US. He's been poached from Spotify and Megaphone, and will head up the regional sales team.

This hasn't happened before to our knowledge: Buzzsprout lost the most amount of shows in our sample last week, losing 40 shows overall. Anchor hoovered up 60 shows overall, with Megaphone and Acast also doing well.

The Joe Rogan Experience is still #1. Call Her Daddy has climbed, even though it became a Spotify Exclusive in the last quarter; Serial has also climbed a place, in spite of not releasing an episode since 2018. NPR host 19 of the top 50; Megaphone 13; Simplecast 10. The highest new entry is True Crime Garage at #43. The top 10 is 50% hosted by women.

Podcast hosting and monetisation platform Megaphone says it has "launched in Germany, Spain, France and Italy".

Libsyn Pro appears to have migrated many of its shows over to Libsyn RSS feeds, according to our podcast hosts tracker (we list the two as separate). Otherwise, our sample suggests Megaphone gained 27 shows overall, while Libsyn lost 25 overall.

Brittany Hall, formerly of Sony Music, Pandora and Megaphone, is the new Head of Sales at podcast analytics and attribution company Chartable. The company has also recently hired Lhanzi Giambrone and Rae Knopf as Account Managers.

Our podcast hosting changes data shows Buzzsprout losing 19 shows overall last week, and Megaphone gaining 32 shows.

We've added ceased shows (those that have removed their RSS feeds) to our podcast host changes page. There are surprisingly few of these. As usual, Megaphone is the paid podcast host being switched to the most (observed gaining 39 shows overall this week); Libsyn performing worst (observed losing 35 shows overall to other hosts).

Last week, we saw an overall 84 shows migrate to Spotify's Anchor and Megaphone. Excepting Podiant’s migrations to Castos, Libsyn was the paid-for podcast host losing the most shows in our sample.

In terms of hosts, Megaphone (14), NPR (8) and Omny Studio (8) host the most shows.

At Podcast Movement, Megaphone launched its Audience Insights Dashboard, working with Nielsen, allowing publishers to segment their audience with details like "job seeker", "tech adopter" or even "dog owner".

Spotify's podcast ad revenue has jumped 627% year-on-year, according to their revenue announcement today: Joe Rogan and Megaphone helping the increase. We learnt that Podz cost the company $53.4m; and Greenroom $67.7m. The company appears to have stopped reporting the number of monthly users who listen to podcasts. They have 365m monthly users; last we heard, 25% of them (91m) listen to podcasts.

Spotify's Megaphone has signed Canada's The Weather Network to the Spotify Audience Network.

First look: Spotify has just announced it has made the Spotify Audience Network advertising marketplace available to advertisers and Megaphone publishers in Australia, Canada and the UK. The service was made available in the US in February. It allows advertisers to buy ads on and off the Spotify platform: Megaphone podcast publishers can opt in, like ViacomCBS and The Wall Street Journal. It's credited with bringing new advertisers to the medium.

BlueWire's switch to Megaphone is highlighted in our 'podcast host changes' page this week. Otherwise, Libsyn lost most shows; Omny Studio gained most.

Chartable has achieved SOC 2 Type 2 certification, which tests a company on security and development practices. The company joins Megaphone and Whooshkaa.

Last week, Anchor hoovered up plenty of paid-for podcasts, but also lost plenty too, according to our sample. SoundCloud was the biggest loser, with 20 losses; Megaphone was the paid podcast host gaining the most shows.

Megaphone appears to have been added to Eero's Block Ads service. If you use this service, or similar, you may discover that no shows hosted on Megaphone currently play. Overcast users will get a helpful error message.

After a short hiatus, our podcast hosting company changes page has returned. As ever, it shows a significant amount of podcasts moving from paid hosting companies to Anchor. Overall, the biggest gains went to Anchor, RedCircle and Megaphone; the biggest losers were Whooshkaa, Soundcloud and Libsyn.

Headliner has integrated with "Megaphone by Spotify".

From our sample, we saw 1.2% podcasts switching podcast hosting company last week. Libsyn was the biggest loser, down 40 shows overall. Megaphone did best, gaining 41 shows. (Anchor gained 72 overall).

Megaphone host 62 of the nominations; ART19 host 24; and PRX 19.

Cumulus Media, owners of Westwood One, says it achieved more than 1bn downloads in 2020, and podcasting is "pacing up more than 30% in Q1". Podcasting revenue grew 40% last year. "We've made our bet on partnership arrangements with talent as opposed to going out and spending a lot of money on IT or infrastructure," said CFO Frank Lopez-Balboa. The company uses Spotify-owned Megaphone.

Spotify promoted the forthcoming Spotify Audience Network, allowing advertisers access to Spotify’s Originals & Exclusives, podcasts via Megaphone and Anchor, and ad-supported music. It will bring their Streaming Ad Insertion product to Megaphone podcast publishers as well as Anchor podcasters. You can also buy podcast advertising for the first time through Spotify Ad Studio in the US, beta testing from today.

Podcast host Captivate has announced new integration with Descript, allowing you to upload directly from the Descript interface. Megaphone has launched a unique listener performance tool, allowing "elegant, real-time visibility into podcast impressions, downloads, and listener engagement".

A new podcast production company for US Latinos, Pitaya Entertainment has been launched. It has six shows currently, and the press release describes the company's executives as a "dream team", including Andy Bowers, formerly of Slate and Megaphone, alongside record company executives and producers.

Research company Kantar, which measures and analyses podcast ad effectiveness for Pandora and Spotify, has announced partnerships with Acast, Midroll and Megaphone.

Megaphone hosts more popular podcasts than anyone else, the data also shows - by some margin.

The .fm top-level domain-name is now most popular with podcasters, according to 2020 data from the company, with Castbox, Anchor, Podsights, Megaphone, Omny Studio, Transistor, and Captivate in the top 15 of a chart of DNS server responses.

Podcast host Megaphone has been added to a number of ad-block lists. Users of the Brave browser, or the rather good NextDNS (affiliate), or uBlock Origin, are all blocking access to Megaphone: these blocks occurred before Spotify's purchase of the company. Jack Rhysider, who hosts with them, would like to be able to use Megaphone without sharing listener data with others.

Spotify now officially owns Megaphone. The $235m acquisition was made official yesterday.

Megaphone now supports premium feeds in beta, using Supporting Cast.

Sounds Profitable's Bryan Barletta gets interviewed by Inside Podcasting about the Spotify Megaphone purchase. "Streaming Ad Insertion (SAI) monetizes a show as an app, while Dynamic Ad Insertion (DAI) monetizes a show as a podcast."

According to investors Greystone Capital, Libsyn is "cheap, growing, with catalysts on the horizon", adding "unlike Anchor, Megaphone and Wondery, LSYN is profitable, and highly cash generative". Ouch. Libsyn is still looking for a new CEO.

Lydia Polgreen from Gimlet spoke to Recode's Peter Kafka about Spotify's plans to get podcasts in front of more of their users.

Megaphone now appears to support VAST, a method of allowing multiple third party companies to serve ads on podcasts. ART19 announced their support in September.

"Increased targeting, measurement granularity, and ad inventory management ease could fundamentally ruin what made podcast advertising great — and make it as screwed up as the rest of digital advertising" - Nick Quah, Hot Pod

In its biggest deal yet, Spotify announced it has bought podcast hosting company Megaphone. The Verge suggests that the purchase price was $235m. Spotify says that its Streaming Ad Insertion technology will be made available to all Megaphone publishers; and a note sent to current Megaphone clients explicitly highlights that they will continue to support all podcast platforms. We have analysis below.

Podcast ad-tech host Megaphone is still losing money but revenues increased significantly in the first nine months of 2020. Graham Holdings Company also owns Slate, Foreign Policy, and kids podcast publisher Pinna; all these companies lost money, though Pinna's revenue is also increasing.

Placements·io has signed with Megaphone to integrate with the company. The release says that Megaphone will work with Placements·io to streamline the process of buying and selling podcast advertising inventory.

The Athletic is partnering with Megaphone for podcast distribution and monetisation. The Athletic is a subscription-based sports publisher.

iHeart currently hosts with Megaphone; but has hosted with Spreaker in the past.

Megaphone Studio is celebrating its one-year anniversary. Megaphone achieved 827m downloads in September, says the release; Megaphone Studio makes podcasts for brands, typically working on fifty shows at a time.

We hear from multiple sources that Megaphone appears to be looking for a buyer.

CNN and iHeartRadio have launched Election 101, a new co-produced podcast that demystifies the American political system. (As a Brit looking in from afar - good luck with that.) It's hosted by CNN correspondent Kristen Holmes, distributed by the iHeartPodcast Network and hosted on Megaphone; last month, a shortform podcast CNN Political Briefing was launched using Omny Studio.

Cumulus Media's Westwood One has selected Placements.io to create a custom operating management system that will integrate with Megaphone, to "dramatically improve the ease and scalability of Westwood One Podcast Network’s advertising sales operations".

ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia has added three new podcasts to its roster, and posted audience growth figures. "Listening on the iHeartPodcast Network is up 31% since before the pandemic," says the data. ARN uses Megaphone.

Our podcast hosts page is now updated: Megaphone gained IAB Certification in May, and we've added Podspace, a Swedish podcast host.

Megaphone has passed two independent audits about security and effective controls.

Megaphone will now offer attribution for ads booked through the Megaphone Targeted Marketplace, following an agreement with Podsights.

Megaphone is now hosting podcasts from 'Noisier', a Bristol UK based production company. Their first show, Real Narcos, has topped the charts in many different countries.

Thank you to podcast editor and voiceover Harlie who became our 14,000th subscriber today, joining new subscribers this week from Spotify, NOVA Entertainment, Condé Nast, Megaphone, Simplecast and Gimlet Media among many others.

Parisian podcast publisher Engle, which makes shows in French and English, has partnered with Megaphone for distribution and monetisation.

ESPN is to use Megaphone for podcast hosting and dynamic content insertion from July. They currently appear to self-host.

Megaphone is apparently moving offices in Reston VA, USA, to a building looking like a sandcrawler from Star Wars. They'll join up to 1,500 salvaged droids the folks from Google, who are the anchor tenant.

Speaking in a webinar yesterday organised by Megaphone, Jeremy Weiner, Megaphone Director of East Coast Sales, said: "What we're not seeing is any kind of dips in listenership, but we are definitely seeing changes in that the listenership is pretty even throughout the day as opposed to spiking in the morning and evening." George Gehring, Megaphone Studio Director of Media Solutions said that one of their advantages was that they can change creative "on a dime". "It's really enabled us to say to our partners now more than ever, we're here to help and we can help you pivot quickly and smartly." Steph Beran Sanderson, Wordsworth + Booth Director of Strategy, added: "Focus on staying flexible. This is the absolute key. In terms of how you're communicating, you need to be nimble and light on your feet enough to adapt as consumer sentiment shifts." Gehring gave an example: "We're working with one alcohol brand who just launched a new product and the messaging was, drink [this] at a bar, go to this store to buy it. And we switched out the creative and now it was, this drink is as good on the sofa as it is at the bar. Use your order delivery service for it." Dan Misener, pacificcontent Head of Strategy & Audience Development, added: "Pay attention to those broad industry trends, but also try and look at your own numbers on your own shows, on your own networks, and figure out what of that is actionable."

Using data from Megaphone, ARN's iHeartPodcast Network Australia claims "a significant increase and interesting changes" in podcast consumption. Particularly, it points to a new peak between 11am and 1pm.

Thank you to our many new subscribers, helping us hit 12,600 readers earlier this week. Among the 200 recent subscribers in the past two weeks, welcome to those from SCA, Megaphone, Crate Media, JAR Audio, Spotify, the Jordan Harbinger show, Cavalry Media, Media Radar, Deutschland Radio, Pushkin, Condé Nast, ABC News, FOX News, and Radio France. Please consider becoming a supporter or advertising.

Telescope is a new podcast focused on the personal stories of people all around the world dealing with the [profound and wide-raging effects of COVID-19 and social distancing in their day-to-day lives(https://podnews.net/press-release/telescope-isolation). (Neon Hum Media / Megaphone)

Viral: Coronavirus focuses on the actions of Congress and the Federal Reserve and explores how their decisions will impact the possibility of a recession. The show will tackle the questions that everyday Americans are all wondering: What is the government doing? Why are they doing it? Most importantly, will it work? (Three Uncanny Four / Sony Music Entertainment / Megaphone)

Staying In with Emily & Kumail is a podcast for charity about making the best of living life under quarantine. Oscar-nominated film The Big Sick was based on Emily Gordon's chronic illness that forces her to stay indoors for long periods of time. (Hyperobject Industries / Three Uncanny Four Productions / Megaphone)

America Dissected: Coronavirus launches today - it's the second season of America Dissected, and is hosted by Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a physician and former city health commissioner. (Crooked Media / Megaphone)

How the heck are we gonna get along is a new podcast, recorded weekly in front of a live studio audience, from Clay Aiken. "This series genuinely tries to bridge the gap between the extremes of American politics", says Conal Byrne from iHeartRadio, which has partnered with Politicon to produce the show. (Megaphone)

Broken: Jeffrey Epstein returns for a second season, including a new host, investigative and political journalist Tara Palmeri. (Three Uncanny Four Productions, Hyperobject Industries, Miami Herald, Megaphone)

Science Vs has a new episode about covid-19, the virus more commonly known as Coronavirus. They've also added a song to remind you to wash your hands, the most effective way of protecting yourself. (Megaphone)

A new podcast from Gimlet, Conviction: American Panic, was launched yesterday. It explores the story of John Quinney and investigates crimes some claim never happened – otherwise known as the “Satanic Panic.” There's a video trailer here. (Megaphone)

New York Media merged with Vox Media at the end of last year; and Vulture's Good One podcast, a podcast about jokes and the people that tell them, is relaunching as a weekly Vox Media podcast. It's the first to officially enter the Vox Media fold. (Megaphone)

Enterprise podcast host Megaphone has opened an office in Germany, officially launching its expansion into Europe.

Andy Bowers, the co-founder of Megaphone, has left the company. As a clue to what he's doing next, he writes: I had so much fun in the early days of podcasting—when the stakes were low and failure helped us learn, when things were not so formulaic and we were making up the rules as we went along—that I’m moving on to other nascent media.

A Slate Plus series from 2015, The History of American Slavery, has been republished for everyone to hear "at a time when the voices of the worst racists and history-deniers feel more emboldened to publicly renounce the rights of Black people" (Slate / Megaphone)

Mouthpeace launches today: the latest weekly podcast series from Lemonada Media. It's hosted by Michael Bennett, an NFL player, and his wife Pele Bennett. (Lemonada Media, Westwood One, Megaphone)

Verdict with Ted Cruz has "topped the charts" and apparently has been downloaded more than 500,000 times so far, according to US newspaper coverage of the US Senator's podcast. (Megaphone/Podtrac)

The Topical, the new satirical podcast from The Onion, has published its trailer: it launches on Jan 29. It's part of a new strategic partnership between The Onion and Sony Music Entertainment. (Megaphone)

Snacks Daily, a financial news podcast from US stock trading company Robin Hood, has hit 10 million total downloads (Megaphone)

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)

Up and Vanished is coming to Oxygen, a US true-crime TV channel. Here's the trailer: it airs Feb 15 in the US, and presumably will also air on the channel in Australia. (Tenderfoot TV / Megaphone)

We Stan Together is a brand new podcast that presents theories, dissertations, STANments about a piece of pop-culture. Episode topics include Singers Trying to Act, and 80’s Ladies Pop Stars. (More Banana / Megaphone)

Megaphone has announced David Cohn as Head of Sales. He joins from WarnerMedia.

Rocketship is back for a new season. It's a business podcast that has brought stories and advice to the startup community for the last 6 years: this season is all about product failure, like Google+, Webvan, and... Audible. (Rocketship / The Podglomerate / Megaphone)

Let's make a poop with Triumph the Insult Comedy Dog is a new podcast from Conan O'Brien's Team Coco. In the first episode, Lawrence O'Donnell, Pete Davidson, and Anthony Scaramucci compete for charities and their dignity, at Union Temple's Murmrr Ballroom in Brooklyn NY, USA. (Starburns Audio / Team Coco / Robert Smigel / Megaphone)

What A Day, launched in October, is "a funny but incredibly informative news source", according to their publicist (and we're not going to argue). On Dec 3, the hosts, comedian Akilah Hughes and Gideon Resnick, interviewed presidential candidate Julian Castro. (Crooked Media / Megaphone)

In a memo obtained by Podnews, the Sony Music podcasting team has been announced. Emily Rasekh (Entercom, CBS Radio) is Senior Vice President of Business Development and Operations, Podcasting; reporting to her are Brittany Hall (Pandora, Megaphone), Vice President of Sales, Podcasting; Ryan Zack (Megaphone, Acast), Vice President of Revenue Operations, Podcasting; and Christy Mirabal (Stitcher, Panoply), Vice President of Marketing, Podcasting. Emily reports up to Dennis Kooker, President, Global Digital Business & U.S. Sales and Tom Mackay, President, Sony Music Film and TV A&R, who add: "Together this leadership team strongly positions us to super-serve the podcast community, help them reach larger audiences on more platforms and further grow our podcasting business opportunities around the world. With a rapidly expanding number of creative partnerships and with the strength of our best-in-class capabilities, we are confident they will keep enhancing Sony Music’s compelling value proposition in the podcasting industry. "

Business news network CNBC has partnered with Megaphone for podcast hosting and monetisation. The company previously used ART19.

Who better to host true crime podcasts than the people who worked on the cases? Break in the Case is a true crime podcast from the NYPD, with NYPD detectives taking us through cases they've worked on. (Megaphone)

Good Kids: How Not To Raise An A**hole is a new podcast from Lemonada. "This isn’t just another parenting podcast. It’s a quasi-manual for how to raise better humans," they say: and good enough for Facebook to censor ads for, which probably means it's excellent. It's just 15 minutes long: seven episodes are now available, and expect more every week. (Lemonada / UTA / WestwoodOne / Megaphone)

Family Ghosts isn't another spooky paranormal podcast - instead, it's about those stories and rumors that follow families around, sometimes for generations. It returns on December 3rd, and the first three episodes focus on the descendants of the last known slave ship to arrive on US shores. (WALT FM / Spoke Media / Megaphone)

The second official WWE podcast is coming on December 2nd. The New Day: Feel The Power is a weekly podcast from The New Day’s Kofi Kingston, Xavier Woods and Big E. (WWE / Endeavor Audio / Megaphone)

Welcome to new subscribers in November from companies including Acast, Spotify, the South China Morning Post, Sony Music, Mamamia, Magellan, RedCircle, PRX, Luminary, Megaphone, ART19, Voxnest, the BBC, Entale, and iHeartMedia. If you find us useful, please tell your colleagues! (And, use your unique link at the bottom of our emails and we'll send you nice stuff.)

More Rick and Morty - Ricksplained features special guests from the hit show to help overexplain the secret deeper meanings, whether or not those meanings are intentional. It's represented by PAR. (New Rockstars / Megaphone)

Crooked Media and Pineapple Street Studios are releasing a Pod Save America special series on the Iowa Caucuses. The series aims to help listeners understand why Iowa is the first state in the primary process, how the caucuses work, and what it takes to win. (Megaphone)

American Jihadi is released today from Endeavor Audio - the stranger-than-fiction tale of an Alabama-born terrorist running for his life and the journalist who befriended him during his own darkest moments. What does it mean to be a journalist, a ‘hero,’ and an American? (Megaphone)

Slow Burn is back for a new season, tackling the murders of Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G; it's been marketing its podcast by handing out CDs in New York. (Megaphone)

Hunted launches on November 12th: the first in a slate of audio fiction from Wolf Entertainment and Endeavor Audio. "When four convicts escape from a maximum-security prison, Deputy Marshal Emily Barnes (Parker Posey) is called in to pursue the criminals on one of the most treacherous and violent manhunts in United States history." The trailer's in our podcast today. (Wolf Entertainment / Endeavor Audio / Megaphone)

Westwood One is to use Megaphone as its host, and will use "Megaphone's hosting, publishing, dynamic ad insertion, campaign management, and analytics tools to deliver targeted ads to its podcast listeners." They previously used Omny Studio.

Launching next Monday, What A Day is a new daily podcast from Crooked Media, "the people behind Pod Save America". It promises a constructive approach - "what matters, and how to fix it". (Megaphone)

Megaphone has a new CFO: Cameron D. Jones joins from a variety of finance positions at Revolt TV, Viacom, NPR and The Washington Post.

Artemis is a steamy retelling of the classic Greek myth of Artemis, the Goddess of the hunt. The first five episodes of thrilling adventures, complete with love, loss, and turmoil, are everywhere - and the description tells you how you can listen to all 16 on Himalaya+. (Megaphone)

Correction: on Friday, we said that "podcasts on Megaphone were unavailable for three hours", linking to their status report called CMS and feeds unavailable, which initially noted that "RSS feeds are currently unavailable". Megaphone have asked us to point out that this really meant that new RSS feeds were unable to be published, but RSS feeds were available as normal to listeners. We're grateful for the clarification.

Podcasts on Megaphone were unavailable for three hours yesterday morning (US time), after what the company called an unusual surge of traffic. Everything's fine now.~~ We had clarification of this outage.

Maggie McGuire, the CEO of Pinna, an ad-free children's audio network, talks to Podcast Movement. They advertise themselves, though: "We’re running advertising across audio networks including Spotify, Pandora, and NPR, and across podcast networks like Megaphone and Midroll."

Foodgod, aka Jonathan Cheban, has launched a new podcast. Kim Kardashian West is the debut guest for Foodgod: OMFG!. (YEA Networks / Megaphone)

The Secret History of the Future, in its latest edition, compares the evolution of radio in the past 20 years (from independent to corporate) and wonders whether podcasting will be any different. (Slate / The Economist / Megaphone)

Dexter Guff is smarter than you is a satirical show featuring an under-qualified, over-confident, lifestyle entrepreneur. Jack Rhysider recommends us this episode, recorded in the exhibition hall at Podcast Movement. "It's hilarious to me at least," he adds. We'd agree. (Himalaya / Megaphone)

Ken Lagana has been announced as Entercom's Executive VP of Digital Sales, looking after Entercom's podcasting and radio·com business. He joins from Megaphone. The US broadcaster bought Cadence13 and Pineapple Street earlier this month.

It's like The Daily, only for fans of murder and thievery! Parcast is launching Today in True Crime. The show starts in mid September. "Here's what else you need-to-kill-today". (Megaphone)

Hitman is a new true crime podcast from iHeartRadio, following the real story of Lawrence Horn — an engineer at Motown records who was behind some of Motown’s greatest hits by the Supremes and the Jackson 5 — and the peculiar circumstances surrounding the murder of his ex-wife, son and friend. (iHeartRadio / Megaphone)

Eater's Digest is new, promising the wildest, most important stories from restaurants and kitchens around the world. (Vox Media / Eater / Megaphone)

It's back, baby. The Ron Burgundy Podcast returns for a new season, starting with Kamala Harris, a US presidential candidate. (iHeartRadio / Megaphone)

Condé Nast men's lifestyle publication GQ has officially launched its Airplane Mode podcast on Megaphone. The podcast, about living healthier and smarter, initially surfaced in May. (Megaphone)

Rick and Morty are coming back next month. Pickle Me This is a Rick and Morty podcast, "binging our way through seasons 1 and 2" with show news and behind the scenes details. (Bald Move / Starburns Audio / Megaphone)

How To! with Charles Duhigg is new from Slate. Each week, Charles Duhigg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, takes on listeners’ toughest problems and with the help of experts finds the answers to questions you’ve always wanted to ask, but couldn’t. First up is "How to withstand pain". (Megaphone)

Season two of iHeartRadio's Hell and Gone delves into the mysterious death of Janie Ward, a 16-year-old high school student who died at a party in 1989 in Marshall AK, USA. (iHeartRadio / School of Humans / Megaphone)

Acast, Buzzsprout, Transistor, Podbean, Captivate and Megaphone are some of the publishers that have switched on the new Apple podcast categories for their users. (We've also shifted to using News > Daily News in our podcast as the primary category.)

Land of the Giants launched today - all about the five giants of the internet, going by the not sinister name of FAANG. The first season focuses on the rise of Amazon. (Recode / Vox Media / Megaphone)

In Green Eggs and Dan, out August 7, Dan Ahdoot talks with comedians, writers, actors, and chefs about what they love most; food. Because everyone eats. Would you, could you, in your app? Try it, try it. When it comes out. (The Podglomerate / Megaphone)

The Clearing is a new true crime documentary series - "what came after April Balascio called a detective in 2009 to tell him about her suspicions". The press release contains a visualised trailer, which is worth a watch. (Gimlet / Pineapple Street Media / Megaphone)

Podcasts are getting shorter, so says podcast host Megaphone, who looked at the top 200 (US) podcasts, and offer the advice to "start shorter than your first instinct tells you to".

Welcome to 250 new subscribers so far this month, including folk from Kaya FM and Submedia in South Africa, Nova Entertainment and the ABC in Australia, Wise Buddah and Folded Wing in the UK, Megaphone and Stitcher in the US, and Belgium's VRT.

Noble Blood is new from iHeartRadio - a "podcast that discusses the salacious, secret and tragic stories of monarchs like you’ve never heard them before." (Megaphone)

The winners are on the NYF website. Congratulations also to Podnews supporter Lantigua Williams & Co.’s 70 Million, which was bronze winner in the category of Narrative/Documentary Podcasts; and to supporters NPR and Megaphone / Panoply for your winning entries too.

Are host-read ads best? Or can you use a pre-produced spot ad instead? The Sonic Truth covers data from Megaphone's Ken Lagana in this episode; as he says in an accompanying article:

Thank you to almost 200 new subscribers so far this month, including folk from Spotify, Dave Ramsey, WhatPods, Emmis, ART19, Le Monde, Luminary, Acast, Megaphone, GFK, NPR and Poland's RMF. We'd appreciate your help in getting the word out - any chance of a Tweet or LinkedIn mention today about us?

Global Translations is a new podcast from Politico that tackles big problems that don't respect political boundaries. The first season features deep dives on the method behind the apparent madness of Donald Trump's tariff wars, the looking fight between the West and China for technological supremacy, and the urgent problem of climate change. (Politico / Megaphone)

Comedic fictional podcast This Sounds Serious is back for a second series. This time Gwen is searching for Melissa Turner, the country’s most missing person, who has disappeared under extremely strange circumstances. (Kelly&Kelly / Castbox / Megaphone)

The History of Standup returns for a new season today. The History of Standup has a simple mission, to tell the story of standup comedy in America, and to have fun doing it. (Podglomerate / Megaphone)

Nice Try is a new seasonal podcast about the perpetual search for the perfect place. The first season, Utopian, looks at the story behind some of the world's places specifically-designed to be a utopia of their very own. (Curbed / Vox Media / Megaphone)

Thanks to Megaphone - modern podcast technology for publishers and advertisers - for becoming a Gold Supporter today.

This Land is a new podcast from Crooked Media to explore the dramatic history of Oklahoma tribal land rights, revolving around two seemingly unrelated Oklahoma murders that occurred over 150 years apart. (Crooked Media / Megaphone)

Dateline is a new podcast from NBC News's Dateline news magazine program. It's their first foray into podcasting. (Megaphone)

To Live And Die In LA has so far had 15 million downloads, and will conclude later this month. The team behind the podcast have announced a new title from June, called Culpable. (Tenderfoot TV / Cadence13 / Megaphone)

Primetime is a new seasonal podcast about the history of television and its impact on American culture. (Vox Media / Megaphone)

What time should you publish your podcast? Megaphone has analysed the data. Times are for New York, by the way.

But that's another story, a podcast about books that changed peoples' lives, has Melinda Gates as their current guest. "She talks about what James Baraz’s Awakening Joy taught her about meditating, learning to take a step back, and trusting her soul." (Macmillan / Megaphone)

KPCC is launching Tell them, I am next week, with a new episode every day this Ramadan. The stories are universal; the guests are all Muslim. Tan France, star of Netflix’s hit show Queer Eye, actress Alia Shawkat, best known for her role as Maeby Funke in Arrested Development, and Iqbal Theba from the Oscar-winning movie Greenbook are among the many high-profile guests. (Megaphone)

"How to break into podcast advertising" is a crash course for advertisers from Megaphone, including advice on style, sound and best practice. Megaphone have also posted a piece looking at Game of Thrones podcasts. There are many of them.

Megaphone post about the Apple Watch, calling it podcasting's stealth success story.

Steven Goldstein says "Subscribe" is a bad word for podcasting, highlighting one of the pieces of data from the Edison Research Podcast Consumer study. He's not alone: Megaphone also says we should banish the verb “subscribe” from our free service. (Our podcast pages have never used it - we like the word "listen". You?)

NBC News is switching to Megaphone as a podcast host. They previously used to use ART19, we think.

The twice-daily WSJ What's News has been relaunched with a new format: mornings are straight news reports, while afternoons are more analysis-based. (Megaphone)

Stupid Genius with Emma Chamberlain is a new show from a YouTuber who has more than fifteen million followers on social media. (Ramble/Megaphone)

The Bellas Podcast is new from WWE Superstars, TV personalities and entrepreneurs, celebrity twins Nikki and Brie Bella. (Endeavor Audio / Megaphone)

The Last Laugh: A Daily Beast Podcast launches today in Himalaya: The Daily Beast’s Matt Wilstein interviews some of the biggest names in comedy about what it’s like to be a comedian in this current cultural and political moment. The first guest is Sarah Silverman. (Megaphone)

Welcome to over 300 new subscribers over the last two weeks, including from companies like ABC Australia, Scripps, Gimlet Media, Stitcher, NPR, SRF, Buzzsprout, Acast, Turner, Megaphone, iHeartMedia, Spotify, Deezer, Westwood One, Radioplayer Germany, Entercom, ACE Radio, and the BBC.

What Really Happened launches a set of interview podcasts yesterday, "expanding season 2" of the hit podcast. Host Andrew Jenks will sit down with a wide-range of notable personalities to discuss “what really happened” during a specific, significant time in their lives. (Seven Bucks Productions, Cadence13, Megaphone)

The Feast the critically-acclaimed podcast about meals that made history, is launching its third season today: the podcast offers "delectable stories from the dining tables of history", and was nominated for a Public History Award last year. (Podglomerate, Megaphone)

Ghost Town, a comedy podcast about mysterious, abandoned and esoteric places all over the world, will have a live stage show on April 25th in Los Angeles CA, USA. (Megaphone)

Panoply Media has rebranded as Megaphone. "The new name reflects the company’s singular focus on podcast technology".

Plus 7 Intelligence has launched a seven-part series on gaming and education today. You'll hear from the educators who are pushing past boundaries to find the games that make learning more effective and more joyful. (The Podglomerate / Megaphone)

Cadence13 is switching podcast host to Megaphone by Panoply; they previously used ART19. In HotPod, Nick Quah suspects this is a sign of a hosting shakeup to come.

Tenderfoot TV and Cadence13 have announced To Live And Die In LA, an investigative podcast into the death of an aspiring actress, hosted by Neil Strauss. The podcast is set to launch next Thursday, Feb 28. (Tenderfoot TV / Cadence13 / Megaphone by Panoply)

Panoply and Veritonic have inked a deal to help Megaphone by Panoply's advertising partners choose the most effective ad creative for their campaigns.

Himalaya have invested $100m in a launch of a "creator-focused, innovative podcast platform, network and community". The platform includes monetisation for podcasters, including tipping and follower bonuses; the company has signed a bunch of new shows, and partnered with Acast and Megaphone. It has expertise from the wildly successful Ximalaya FM platform in Asia.

Gimlet have released Conviction, an investigative podcast that features a detective, Manuel Gomez, who is "straight out of a detective novel". All episodes were released yesterday, on "Apple Podcasts, Spotify and all podcast streaming apps". (Gimlet / Megaphone)

The Ron Burgundy Podcast launches on Feb 7, but the trailer's there already. It starts with an exclusively produced theme tune (or Ron Burgundy singing "Ron Burgundy Podcast"). (iHeart / Megaphone)

Megaphone by Panoply has integrated with Google Campaign Manager to help advertisers and agencies manage their campaigns. The Google product allows one view to manage creative and campaigns (here's an overview); historically, podcast advertising has been managed separately, and this should help podcasting appeal to new advertisers, says Megaphone.

S#xual health podcast The S#x Wrap, which answers listener questions each week – typically questions that people are too afraid to ask at home, too embarrassed to ask at school, too hard to ask their partners, or too concerned with corporate email servers to write its name properly. The hosts are public health specialists: Spring is an associate professor at CUNY school of public health; Andrew is currently an assistant professor of public health at the University of Miami. One for your "top ten Valentine's Day podcasts" listicles? (Podglomerate / Megaphone)

The iHeartRadio Podcast Awards took place on Friday night. The winners are posted on the official website, and video clips available on Twitter. Podcast of the year went to Slow Burn (Slate/Megaphone) - see the speech. We reported in November that host Leon Neyfakh, and some of his team, have now left Slate; he did not collect the award.

iHeartMedia and Panoply's Megaphone have done a deal for distribution. After an original deal with Stuff Media, which iHeart purchased in September, Megaphone will now be used "to distribute select podcasts across its iHeartPodcast Network." iHeart has been using ART19 for many of them.

IAB Certification update: Whooshkaa lets us know that they, too, are in the process of attaining IAB Certification. They join Simplecast, Voxnest/Spreaker, Megaphone, Libsyn, Omny Studio, and ART19. Blubrry and NPR are already there.

Podcast host Megaphone has told its customers that the company now has a "passthrough agreement" in place with Spotify. This means dynamic ads and metrics should work within Megaphone as they do for other platforms (and Spotify will no longer cache those podcasts).

Omny Studio has indicated it is applying for IAB Certification. They join Voxnest/Spreaker, Megaphone, Libsyn, and ART19.

ART19 has told Podnews that it, too, is working towards IAB Certification. They join the previously reported Voxnest/Spreaker, Megaphone and Libsyn. (Any more?)

Voxnest/Spreaker has confirmed, as has Megaphone, that they are working on IAB Certification.

Megaphone's website has a new look, and a new logo. The podcast host, based in Washington DC and Brooklyn NY, USA, powers 1,200 shows.

Panoply's Megaphone has announced a number of hosting deals with companies like the San Francisco Chronicle, networks like Starburns·audio, and Pat Flynn's Smart Passive Income.

Cabana has added Bear Brook to its ad-sales portfolio. It's an investigative podcast from New Hampshire Public Radio. (NHPR / Megaphone)

Vox Media has selected Panoply as their new podcast host. The company will use the Megaphone Targeted Marketplace audience targeting tech, starting with a limited trial across SB Nation's titles. They were previously using ART19.

Instant Message is a new weekly tech podcast from The Wall Street Journal. It's hosted by WSJ journalists David Pierce, Joanna Stern and Christopher Mims. (Megaphone)

Limetown returns for season two on 30 October. The first season had over 10m downloads. (Two-Up / Endeavour Audio / Megaphone)

Making Gay History returns for its fourth season, focusing on the pre-Stonewall beginnings of the LGBTQ rights movement. "To date, its 36 episodes have been downloaded 1.9 million times in 211 countries and territories." (Pineapple Street Media / Megaphone)

The Wave is a non-partisan behind-the-scenes look at the conversations that Washington reporters and politicians are having amongst themselves right now. (Podglomerate / Megaphone)

Women in Charge features Slate EIC Julia Turner, asking other women in charge about the nitty-gritty details of their work lives. (Slate / Megaphone)

Last week, we reported than Panoply had suddenly stopped producing new podcasts, focusing instead on its hosting platform, Megaphone. Panoply's CEO, Brendan Monaghan, answers some of our questions on the announcement: their two new podcasts are still going to be produced, and Megaphone is cleverer than the average podcast host.

Panoply has announced that it is letting go of its entire editorial staff, and is no longer developing new podcasts or handling direct sales. It is focusing on Megaphone, its podcast hosting platform, which powers 8% of the US top 400 podcasts, and which the company calls "the clear leader in podcasting technology and advertising services".

The Interning 101 Podcast is based on Interning 101 book by Emily White. It promises "interviews with former interns, executives who hire interns, and other entertainment professionals whose wisdom and experience will provide insight into the interning experience". (Jabberjaw Media / Megaphone)

Outward is a new LGBTQ podcast. (Slate, Megaphone)

C-Suite Radio, a business podcast network, has signed with Panoply's Megaphone for podcast hosting and monetisation.

Digiday writes about the Walmart podcast Outside the box, which in season two is trying to convince us that 'time > money'. It's produced by Omelet and hosted by Panoply's Megaphone.

Panoply have announced that they will host and monetise Macmillan Podcasts' Steal the Stars via their Megaphone Targeted Marketplace.

The 9 best podcast networks, according to We Edit Podcasts, include PodcastOne, Megaphone, and seven others.

TopPodcast writes on another ad-targeting deal, the HowStuffWorks/Panoply deal that we reported on March 19th, and explains how the Megaphone targeting system works.

Steven Goldstein asks how you promote your podcast, and gives some examples of them being featured and cross-promoted in other media.