I'm back from Podcast Movement 2025, and I have
some thoughts.
Thank you for joining me for The Audacity to Podcast.
I'm Daniel J. Lewis.
I really enjoy going to podcasting conferences.
If you couldn't tell from my previous episode about why you
should attend live events for your podcast, that doesn't
necessarily mean a podcasting conference, but it could be a
conference in general. I enjoy public speaking.
I enjoy hanging out with other podcasters of all shapes and sizes
and types. It's a whole lot of fun.
And the premier podcasting event for many years has been Podcast
Movement.
I was one of the original backers, and I've spoken at most of the
Podcast Movement events over the years.
And it's been around for more than ten years now.
It's incredible to think of still that first conference many
years ago and how it's grown and changed since then.
And I attended both Podcast Movement Evolutions and Podcast
Movement Proper this year, 2025, and things are changing again.
And I have some thoughts, mostly good thoughts, some concerns as
well.
And I invite you to share your thoughts as well if you have any
way of responding to this or commenting on the notes over at
theaudacitytopodcast.com/pm25, I would love to hear from you,
especially if you made it to Podcast Movement.
So I've got several thoughts here, and the biggest thing that
most people are talking about is Podcast Movement and sounds
profitable and pod news mixed in.
So this is that big news from the event and coverage around the
event is that Podcast Movement has acquired sounds profitable.
Sounds Profitable is a podcasting education research and insights
organization with lots of information there.
Now most of it is primarily from the business and advertising
perspective of podcasting, but they do also do a lot of industry
research, especially now that they have Tom Webster, formerly of
Edison Research, working for Sounds Profitable.
So that brings all of Tom's vast experience and knowledge of how
to analyze the space and pull insights about the space and his
great voice too.
And all of that research too sounds profitable, and that helps
the industry as a whole, even independent podcasters who aren't
monetizing their podcasts at all.
Now this move puts Bryan Barletta, the founder of Sounds
Profitable, to be the president of Podcast Movement.
Exactly what that means, we'll see in the coming months.
And also made public at this time is that Podcast Movement has
owned 50% of Pod News, you know, the podcast newsletter over at
podnews.net.
And they've actually owned that 50% for some years now.
And it seems as though James Cridland, the founder of Pod News,
will become the head of content at Podcast Movement and probably
be a major decision maker in the conference content going
forward.
I have great respect for both men and most of their industry
perspectives.
Based on some things that I've seen though, I think some people
might be concerned if this will cause Podcast Movement to lean
hard into a particular political direction or even a particular
advertising direction.
And while time will really tell, I also think there's some
justification to those concerns.
Nonetheless, in conversations I had and observed with James
Cridland, I think he's already making some good decisions about
Podcast Movements, content, and keynotes going forward.
Along with these organizational changes also comes some location
changes, New York City and Austin.
And these locations might be long term for Podcast Movement.
Podcast Movement, the main conference that is, was going to be in
San Diego in 2026, but that has now been changed to New York
City.
That will make it a lot easier for international travelers, and
that certainly puts Podcast Movement a commute away, probably a
long commute, but commute nonetheless from many of the top
advertisers and content networks in podcasting.
So this move makes me think Podcast Movement will only become
even more corporate.
Additionally, Podcast Movement Evolutions, which I wondered if it
would even exist after this year because at the Evolutions event
in Chicago, it was quite a bit underwhelming.
As far as attendance, the content was still great.
And the people that who were there were still great to talk to
and network with.
But there were a lot fewer people than I and I think many others
expected, and a lot fewer exhibitors as well.
So despite that though, Podcast Movement Evolutions is moving in
with South by Southwest or SXSW.
And I think it's so much easier to say South by Southwest than
the abbreviation for it.
I suspect that Bryan Barletta gets most of the credit for this as
he should because he was the one that got a whole podcasting
track at South by Southwest recently as well.
But this also confuses me and in talking with others, it confuses
them too about the focus of these events.
I've talked to many people about their perceptions of podcast
movement and Podcast Movement Evolutions, which I'll probably
just call Evolutions from here on out in this episode.
And I heard about half the people say that Evolutions was for
industry professionals and normal Podcast Movement was for
content creators.
But the other half, including myself, said it's the other way
around.
And then this is where I'm now, that kind of person in the middle
between the two halves who doesn't really know anymore which one
is for industry professionals and which one is for content
creators.
I often thought Evolutions was more for the industry
professionals, what Podcast Movement proper was for the creators
because that's how it started in the beginning.
But with this move to New York City for Podcast Movement and
South by Southwest for Evolutions, I get the impression that
Evolutions will be more for the creators, especially the first
time podcasters and those who are doing a whole lot of other
content creation who will be there at South by Southwest.
Well, Podcast Movement in New York City up close to all of these
advertisers and huge networks will then be more for the industry
professionals.
But the unfortunate thing about both, they are going to be really
expensive to attend and get hotels.
New York City will be hard enough, but Austin will be as booked
as Bethlehem on the night of Jesus' birth.
So I guess get ready to sleep in a stable.
Nonetheless, perhaps to balance this out, some good news to come
from this is that conference recordings will be free, completely
free.
This is perhaps to help relieve some of the stress about the cost
of the new locations, but also I think in line with Sounds
Profitable's core philosophies, and that is that industry
information should be free.
When Sounds Profitable does a report, they often release it
completely free.
They might have some kind of email opt in that you have to do,
but you don't have to pay to get the report.
They make it available for free and that's sponsored by their
partners that they have And the partners have their own benefits
that they get, but the research and the information is free.
And Sounds Profitable is bringing that same core philosophy to
Podcast Movement.
And already now with Podcast Movement 2025, all the
sessions were recorded, and they are going to be publishing all
of those sessions for free.
And they've said that future conferences will also have all
sessions recorded and all sessions be free.
Thus, anyone from anywhere will be able to watch or listen to the
sessions.
They might not be live streamed based on the conference Internet.
I really suspect that they wouldn't be, but at least the sessions
would be free.
So if you want to go to learn, then you'll be able to learn from
home or on the commute or wherever you can consume the sessions
that are published afterward because they will be free.
And I think this is a really smart move.
But as I pointed out in my previous episode about attending live
events, the sessions are often not the biggest value of a
conference.
And I still have yet to see a virtual conference have the same
great networking and relationship building that an in person
event has.
And I've experienced some of them over the years, especially
since the whole COVID stuff happened.
And I say experienced some of them because I've not experienced
all of them that I've registered for just because it was like,
ugh, more Zoom meetings or whatever technology they're using at
the time and staring at a camera and all of this stuff.
And it's it's just not as personable. It's not as relatable.
It's certainly not as connecting as in person networking is.
And I think a big part of that is this will sound weird, but
being able to touch people.
Like, shake a hand, give a hug, a high five, a fist bump,
something like that.
Physically giving each other a business card, patting each other
on the back, different things like that.
You know, all the professional and friendly touches like that.
I think those are very meaningful and not just from a friendship
perspective, but even from a business perspective because you can
read some people by their handshake.
And there's even the thing about is someone willing to give you a
handshake.
There have been a couple times where I've been snubbed from
getting a handshake from someone even though I extended the
handshake in friendship to someone they refused to give a
handshake back and that hurt.
But that's an emotional connection that was shut down.
That kind of emotional connection happens in person.
And digitally, I wouldn't have that same kind of experience, and
that actually might be a bad thing because then I wouldn't even
know, oh, that person doesn't like me if they refuse to shake my
hand because shaking hands doesn't happen online.
It happens in person.
A lot of great things happen in person relationally.
Humans are designed to be in person with each other.
And we'll miss that if we don't get that live in person feel like
we get at the podcast conferences in the past where we go and
attend.
And if in the future, the Podcast Movement conferences are mostly
going to be the professionals, then that might mean we won't be
as interested in going.
But if the sessions are all available, at least you'll get some
of the information that was shared in the sessions.
My next thought will initially sound negative, but I'm not so
sure it is. The Podcast Movement conferences are getting smaller.
That may not actually be a bad thing.
In 2025, I've attended several conferences.
Podfest Multimedia Expo in Orlando, National Religious
Broadcasters or NRB convention in Dallas, Podcast Movement
Evolutions in Chicago, and Podcast Movement Proper in Dallas.
Both of the Podcast Movement events are getting noticeably
smaller, while NRB and I think Podfest are getting larger.
I'll leave the theorizing about why that's happening to people
with more data, but I actually liked that Podcast Movement was
smaller this year.
The entire conference fit in a single big room in the Gaylord
Texan Hotel in Dallas.
The keynotes, expo hall, breakout sessions, speaker and sponsored
lounge, and most of the networking all happened within that same
big room.
It still felt very professional, so it wasn't like it was just
everybody thrown into this one space, But it also had a bit more
of an intimate feel like the early conferences had because we
were very centralized instead of being spread out.
Like Podcast Movement Evolutions, we were on multiple floors,
very spread out, multiple rooms in different places, sessions
happening all over the place.
Same thing with several past Podcast Movement events.
But that wasn't the case here because everything was in one big
room, including the Expo Hall. Yes.
There was a little bit of stuff happening out in the hallways,
but the main reason to be in the hallways was for the networking,
and it was still in the hallway right outside that really big
room.
The Gaylord Hotels and Resorts are great spaces for large
conferences for sure.
And where we were in this place, I've been there before for NRB
convention where every room was packed and the Expo Hall was
downstairs and huge and all of that.
Well, here, we were in one big room, and I liked it.
And I think a lot of other people liked it based on the
conversations that I had.
And one of those reasons was, and this is my next thought, the
Expo Hall was pleasant again.
Being all in the same room, you would think that the sound would
be confusing and deafening.
I've attended some of the Podcast Movements past events, and
maybe you were there too, where there were breakout sessions in
the Expo Hall, and they were far too loud with the PA systems,
and yet people still couldn't hear or focus very well on those
presentations.
And then the poor vendors and other people around in the Expo
Hall had to yell to have conversations at their booths or in the
aisles. It was so loud and so difficult to network in past years.
But this year, it was so very different.
Two things made it so radically different this year, acoustics
and smart headphones.
The big room had enough acoustic treatment in the walls, carpets,
and ceiling that sound didn't reverberate as much as when
everything is in a typical expo space where they bring the carpet
in.
Otherwise, it's just concrete on the ground, and all the walls
are hard concrete, and the ceiling is some kind of hard and very
reflective surface.
Now when you're in a, essentially, a conference room, don't think
conference room like a conference room in an office placed by a
conference room, like, where conferences or conventions are held.
But a large space like that, it's a hotel conference room.
It's a lot more padded, and the acoustics are a whole lot better.
So that was great.
That absorbed the sound a whole lot more, made conversations a
whole lot easier, and it was also more comfortable for walking
around when you're walking on carpet that's built into the floor
instead of carpet that was just trucked in.
But the more technological advancement was in the smart
headphones everyone had.
There were closed back headphones that could receive audio
wirelessly, and each pair of headphones could be switched to
different channels like red, blue, white, yellow, purple, and
some combinations of those colors.
This meant the sessions didn't need a public address system or at
least not allowed one.
Some of the sessions did have a PA system, but they didn't use it
all that much.
And everyone with the headphones could hear very well, and they
could even adjust their listening volume as necessary.
That was fantastic.
It meant a near normal volume conversation could be happening
right behind me, but I could still focus on the session I was
watching because I was listening through my headphones.
There were several times I just didn't even realize there was a
conversation happening right behind me because it wasn't
interrupting. It wasn't distracting.
I could focus on the headphones.
And I've heard from some of the other speakers too that they
noticed their audience seemed more focused.
Adam Curry, surprisingly, Adam Curry loved it.
He was very skeptical when he heard about it.
And certainly there are jokes to be made about how the audience
looks when they're in this state, but it worked out really well.
He loved it. Other speakers, I think, really liked it.
You just do have to get over that dystopian look of it all and
try not to think about doctor who's cyberman or jogging up to
throw a sledgehammer into the screen telling people why 1984
won't be like 1984.
But as a speaker, and I presented on what you need to know about
podcasting two point o, I felt a bit disconnected from my
audience because of the headphones.
It was great that I could talk at a normal volume.
And because I've done so much public speaking in the past where I
didn't have a microphone, and maybe it's just a odd reaction.
It's a habit. I need to get over. I admit that.
I need to get over this habit.
But I have a tendency when I'm in front of a crowd, even when I'm
holding a microphone to project my voice more and to be louder
louder than I need to be.
And I do the same thing if I am recording a video interview like
at CES or sometimes at Podcast Movement, where I'm in a loud
space, but I have a microphone right in front of me.
I forget that the microphone can hear me just fine.
I don't need to yell, but it's I know a lot of people do this,
but it's something that I'm working on overcoming in myself.
It's that hearing a lot of sound around me, I feel like I need to
be louder, and other people often feel the same.
But the headphones did make it so that everyone could hear me for
sure.
So I think actually this this time, I did a better job at not
yelling or projecting my voice when I was talking into the
microphone. It felt a lot like podcasting.
And so much like podcasting that I think some of us even felt
like taking off our pants.
But when it came to audible responses from my audience,
especially laughter, I felt very disconnected just like I did
when I told that joke about taking off your pants because I
couldn't hear you laugh.
There at the event, I couldn't hear the audience laugh because
the expo hall was just loud enough that I couldn't hear those
sounds from my audience.
So I had to scan the whole crowd to see if they were laughing
instead of just hearing the combined laughter like you would get
inside a room where everything is quiet.
And then when the audience laughs, you hear their laughter.
And if they're still laughing, you know, to wait longer or
anything like that.
It's just a little bit of the energy was different.
Nonetheless, I think the sessions in the Expo Hall were much
better with this setup, especially compared to without this
setup.
And I felt like we podcasters didn't have to worry so much about
protecting our moneymakers, which are our voices.
That is if you don't think about the parties, which I'm convinced
are forever cursed to be always way too loud and pump the music
into too many places.
Like, you can't escape the music at the parties.
Nonetheless, it was really neat being all in the same room there
at the Expo Hall, and you could see people walk from session to
session, and they were going back and forth in the room or from
session to session in the same room.
So I think the vendors got a lot more foot traffic because they
were in the middle of all of this.
And sometimes you had to walk through the vendor area to get to
the next session, and I think that was good because then you got
to see the vendors, maybe connect with them along the way, and
the other people passing the other way like two ships in the
night, or maybe not, depending on how that actually plays out in
that metaphor.
But anyway, you could talk to people, see them, and ask, hey,
how's your session going? I'm going to that side to this session.
You wanna join me? Or, hey, what are you looking at next?
So I I felt like being all in the same room because it was
smaller and because the Expo Hall was actually pleasant this
time, I think made it a whole lot better, and I liked it smaller
like that.
Maybe their budgets didn't really like it for the conference
organizers, but I think we attendees liked it in that smaller
setting. So where should podcasters go now?
You've got Podcast Movement going to New York City, podcast
movement Evolutions going to South by Southwest, and which one
should you go to? And that is a difficult question to answer.
Podcast Movement is still the industry event, but it's becoming a
lot less accessible, maybe more expensive, and maybe more
corporate.
Evolution seems like it would probably tailor more toward
reaching the general content creators at South by Southwest, like
people who also podcast or maybe people who are creating lots of
other content and then want to learn how to podcast.
So Evolutions might have a lot of beginner focused things or more
content creator things, whereas Podcast Movement proper would be
more corporate focused and more advertising business related.
And I think that being in New York City will especially help them
to reach those people, literally reach them in that space that
they'll be really close to those people.
So if you could attend only one big podcasting event per year,
and by podcasting event, I mean an event about podcasting.
So it would help you be a better podcaster and allow you to
network with other podcasters.
If you could attend only one per year, then I think it should be
Podfest. See, Podfest is always in Orlando.
It's been in Tampa sometimes in the past, but I think in the
future, it's always going to be in Orlando.
And that's an easy place to get to.
It's also a place with lots of options around in the area.
It's not like you're in the middle of nowhere, and it's only the
event hotel is the only option.
There's plenty to do in the Orlando area.
And Podfest as a conference is structured much more around the
independent podcasters.
And it seems like it's holding its size or maybe even growing.
I don't have a lot to compare to because I haven't been to all of
the Podfests, unfortunately.
But I would have gone if I could have.
It's just life things happened that prevented me from going.
But plus, the Podcast Hall of Fame has moved to Podfest.
So that brings some special excitement too.
And I've been assured that future hall of fame productions will
return to high quality again.
I don't know whether I'll make it to either Podcast Movement
event in 2026, but I'll definitely be at Podfest.
And I might even be exhibiting at Podfest with a booth.
We'll see. But will I see you there? Please let me know.
And what do you think about these events too?
Which one seems like the better option now?
And if you made it to all three of these events, especially
Podfest, Podcast Movement Evolutions, and Podcast Movement
Proper, I'd love to hear from you your thoughts, especially on
this merger and everything changing and happening and the
thoughts on the latest event and what you might focus on going
forward. Please let me know.
You can comment on the notes for this episode, a simple tap or
swipe away, maybe, or go to TheAudacitytoPodcast.com/pm25 or
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