I'm back from Podcast Movement 2025 in Dallas and I have thoughts, especially after my previous episode about why you should attend live events for your podcast.
Podcast Movement + Sounds Profitable + Podnews
The biggest news is that Podcast Movement has acquired Sounds Profitable, which is a source of podcasting education, research, and insights—primarily from the business and advertising perspective. This moves Brian Barletta, the founder of Sounds Profitable, to be the president of Podcast Movement.
Also made public at this time is that Podcast Movement has owned 50% of Podnews—actually for several years. And it seems as though James Cridland, the founder of Podnews, 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 I've seen, I think some people might be concern if this will cause Podcast Movement to lean hard into a particular political direction. And while time really will tell, I also think there's some justification to their concerns. Nonetheless, in conversations I had or observed with James Cridland, I think he's already making some good decisions about Podcast Movement's content and keynotes.
Merging with Sounds Profitable also inspires some concern about how advertising-focused future events will be. And along that line, …
NYC and Austin locations might be long-term
Podcast Movement 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 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 is moving in with South by Southwest (SXSW). I suspect Bryan Barletta gets most of the credit for this because he was about to get a whole podcasting track at SXSW.
But this also confuses me and others about the focus of these events. I've talked to many people about their perceptions of Podcast Movement and Podcast Movement Evolutions, and I heard about half of the people say that Evolutions was for industry professionals and normal Podcast Movement was for content-creators. But the other half said it the other way around. And then there was some in the middle who had no idea.
With these new locations, I now get the impression that Evolutions at SXSW will be more for the creators while Podcast Movement in NYC will be more for the industry professionals.
But the unfortunate thing about both is that they are really expensive to attend and get a hotel! New York City will be hard enough, but Austin will be as booked as Bethlehem on the night of Jesus's birth! So get ready to sleep in a stable, I guess?
Conference recordings will be free
But on a very positive note, and perhaps to help relieve some of the stress about the cost of the new locations, one of Sounds Profitable's core philosophies is that industry information should be free, and so they've pushed to get every session in Podcast Movement 2025 record and publishing them for free. And future conferences will be the same. Thus, anyone from anywhere will be able to watch or listen to the sessions. They might not be live-streamed, but at least they'll be free!
I think that's 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.
The Podcast Movement conferences are getting smaller
In 2025, I've attended Podfest Multimedia Expo in Orlando, National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) Convention in Dallas, Podcast Movement Evolutions in Chicago, and Podcast Movement 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 of 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 in Dallas. The keynotes, expo hall, breakout sessions, speaker/sponsor lounge, and most of the networking all happened within the same big room. It still felt very professional, but it also had a bit more of that “intimate” feel of the early conferences because we were very centralized instead of being spread out.
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 Podcast Movement's past events where they had 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. And then the poor vendors had to yell to have conversations at their booths.
But two things made this year radically different: 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.
But the more technological advancement was in the smart headphones everyone had. They were closed back headphones that could receive audio wirelessly. Each pair of headphones could be switched to different channels, like red, blue, white, yellow, purple, and some combinations. This meant the sessions didn't need a public address system, or at least not a loud one, and everyone with the headphones could hear very well and adjust their listening volume as necessary. That was fantastic! It even meant a near-normal-volume conversation could be happening right behind me, but I could still focus on the session I was watching.
You just have to get over the dystopian look of it all, and try not to think about Doctor Who's Cybermen or jogging up to throw a sledgehammer into the screen.
But as a speaker (I presented “What You Need to Know about Podcasting 2.0”), I felt a bit disconnected from my audience because of the headphones. It was great that I could talk at a normal volume and trust that they could hear me. But when it came to audible responses from my audience—especially laughter—I felt very disconnected, like I had to scan the whole crowd to see if they were laughing instead of just hearing the combined laughter. Nonetheless, I think the sessions and expo hall were much better with this setup, and I felt like we podcasters didn't have to worry so much about protecting our money-makers: our voices!
(That is, if you don't think about the parties, which I'm convinced are forever cursed to always be way too loud and pump the music into too many places.)
Where should podcasters go now?
This is a difficult question to answer! Podcast Movement is still the industry event, but it's becoming a lot less accessible. Evolutions seems like it will probably tailor more toward reaching the general content-creators at SXSW, and the main conference will obviously better reach the advertisers and big networks in NYC.
So if you could attend only one big podcasting event per year, I think it should be … Podfest!
Podfest is always in Orlando (or maybe Tampa). It's structured much more around the independent podcasters, and it seems like it's holding its size. 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. Will I see you there?
Thanks to Bryan Entzminger from Top Tier Audio for streaming 418§ on my previous episode!
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