Podcast Movement 2026: My Takeaways

This past Thursday and Friday was the first, of many, Podcast Movement podcast conferences in New York City.

In previous years the conference was held in different cities across the United States. Since being acquired by Sounds Profitable, the podcast industry organization, it's going to stay in New York City. This is a good idea since NYC is relatively easy to get to from almost anywhere.

Overall it was a great event and I got to meet a lot of other podcasters, podcast service providers, and podcast agencies.

The venue was a bit weird. It was at Terminal 5 in the Hells Kitchen section of Manhattan. The facility caters mostly to concerts. Because of this attendees, coming and going from the conference, had to go through metal detectors and and have their bags checked searched time. That WAS super weird. We're a bunch of podcasters for crying out loud. What am I going to do bring in a shiv made out of a microphone? I guess I understand, it's the facilities requirement.

An Interesting Setup

The venue was 3 levels and had stages on 2 of them. Their were headsets that you could tune into the different talks and be able to hear what was saying on a particular stage. That was neat because if you wanted to network with other people you could and not disturb the talks and vice versa. The headphones blocked out the surrounding noise quite well.

The conference was two days and was proceeded by the Sounds Profitable Partners Business Summit, which was for the cohort that works with Sounds Profitable on a business level.

Conference Just One Day Vs. Two Days

To be honest, the conference could probably be combined into one day, the attendance was much lighter Friday than it was on Thursday, which was was packed.

Would I go again next year and would I suggest other podcasters and podcasting professionals attend?

Absolutely, for at least the first day.

Where you there? What did you think about the event. What were your take-aways?

— Seth Goldstein

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