Massive podcast outage after Spotify fails to renew a security certificate

Due to an outage on podcast hosting platform owned by Spotify, Megaphone, podcast listeners could not access many of their shows for more than eight hours this week.

Due to an outage on podcast hosting platform owned by Spotify, Megaphone, podcast listeners could not access many of their shows for more than eight hours this week.

According to The Verge, the outage stemmed from the company’s failure to renew Megaphone’s security certificate.

“Megaphone experienced a platform outage due to an issue related to our SSL certificate,” Spotify spokesperson Erin Styles was quoted as saying in a statement.

“During the outage, clients were unable to access the Megaphone CMS and podcast listeners were unable to download podcast episodes from Megaphone-hosted publishers. Megaphone service has since been restored,” Styles added.

As per the report, it is a simple mistake with big ramifications.

Megaphone, which inserts dynamic ads into episodes, hosts many of the industry’s top shows.

It also distributes shows on platforms beyond Spotify, including Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. Spotify hosts many of its own licensed and owned shows on Megaphone, the report said.

Styles said that the company is reaching out to affected publishers.

Spotify acquired Megaphone in December 2020 for $235 million, making it the streamer’s biggest purchase in its quest to build a comprehensive podcasting tech stack.

Spotify did not comment as to why Megaphone’s SSL certificate was left to expire and why it took so long to fix. The certificate expired at 8PM ET on Monday, according to data found by Podnews. The issue was not resolved for another eight hours, according to the platform’s status page.

Even after Megaphone came back online just before 6AM ET, podcasters experienced delays with the Megaphone CMS. As of 9:45AM, the company said the issue was fully resolved.