Podango, one of the most popular podcast hosting services, sent out a warning over the holidays that users should look for other hosting options, as they were unsure if they would be able to continue to provide their service due to the worsening economic situation. As the New Year rolled around, the service has been shut off, which includes their directory and hosting services; they are still, however, offering an RSS feed redirection service so that users of Podango can have their RSS feed for their show redirected to their new feed elsewhere.

Podango offered a free podcast hosting service, for either audio or video. The business model was to provide the hosting, build up a network of content in specific vertical areas and match up advertising with shows in the network. It appears this strategy did not work out, as even with a high number of shows, it's difficult to build up numbers of views to sufficiently monetize; even YouTube, which has no end of content, is only able to monetize around 4% of their total content. In the mean time, the expense of hosting, storage and bandwidth for all that un-monetized content begins to build up. While audio isn't incredibly expensive to host and distribute, video is, and that can eat away at cash reserves quickly.

It appears as if the free hosting model for podcasting is going to soon disappear. This leaves the paid services, such as Libsyn, PodBean, and online video sites like YouTube, which are still making a go of the free model, but don't offer content in a podcastable format. There are also free models that involve using sites like the Internet Archive, but this usually requires a level of technical sagacity beyond the average user.