While podcasting has cemented itself as part of the mainstream, I’ve just come back from On Air Fest 2025 and saw an industry that’s just as vibrant, creative, and collaborative as it was 11 years ago when I was manually loading episodes of The Thrilling Adventure Hour onto a purple 5th gen iPod Nano before class.

Rest in peace, purple iPod Nano. Cut down in your prime by being washed in the pocket of my favorite jeans. 

For nine years work x work has been running On Air Fest. This year they added a 15,000 sqft Creator Space in addition to the available rooms in the Wythe Hotel. Panels, live shows, and installations spread across four locations in a corner of Williamsburg. On paper it might seem spread out. In practice I found every single session bustling with activity. From keynote sessions in the main hall to intimate sessions in the cinema, I didn’t spy a single one that wasn’t at least close to the room’s capacity, if not overflowing.

I’m no stranger to podcast events. Since 2018 I’ve been to everything from the final Podfest to long-running industry staples like Podcast Movement. I’ve seen keynotes with long lines. I’ve seen individual panels with a big name draw a crowd but On Air Fest was something else. A thriving crowd of people across both the creative and business sides of the industry actively excited about podcasting. Generally when waiting in line it’s easy to overhear a snide conversation about scheduling, the venue, speaker choice, or any other details in a laundry list of things someone annoyed at waiting in line for fifteen minutes would summon. Last week was the first time I exclusively heard nothing but anticipation. People networking, setting up meetings, planning out the rest of their festival with friends. 

In a word: collaborative. 

Independence

First thing Thursday morning the event kicked off with The Information’s Julia Black interviewing former Washington Post journalist Taylor Lorenz about power and the creator economy. When the subject of going independent and leaning into podcasting was brought up, Lorenz offered advice to independent creators at large in the form of a mini history lesson. She recalled the 2010s gold rush for MCNs on YouTube. While MCNs still exist today and are a viable option, that rush in the 2010s where most YouTubers signed up with one, only to experience brand damage when several big-name MCNs fell apart, shows the value in maintaining one’s own brand. Being independent means she has full control, and with the growth of the creator economy she’s able to find internet-savvy brands that can work with someone who’s been through the wringer. “I have to find brands that have a high risk tolerance,” Lorenz said in reference to various online dogpilings. Brands working in nearby fields, such as services that remove public information off the internet post-doxxing, are keyed into the creator economy enough to work with YouTubers and podcasters regularly, and not shy away from orchestrated or artificial social media blowback from working with a targeted influencer. 

Throughout On Air Fest I spoke to partners of Sounds Profitable and asked them the same handful of questions, always ending with roleplaying a new brand asking “why should I bother with podcasting?” In the context of what Lorenz was talking about, I look to Odile Beniflah, Head of US at Ausha, and her response: 

“I think that the listeners, the people, trust podcasters more for what they have to say. The world needs authenticity. We don’t want fake news. We want real news, we want real voices. We want to be able to get to know someone, to trust someone, and then have a conversation. And I think to me, at least personally, this is why I’m so passionate about this medium, and why I want to amplify everybody’s voice and the content out there.”

Looking at the Lorenz panel through a business-of-podcasting lens: it has never been more viable for journalists to build their own brand outside of whatever outlet they work for. Which means they’re all the more available to put the leg work in on outlet-agnostic investigative podcasts that’ll be in need of sponsors and producers. 

Filling the Niche

From dogpiling to horse-running, I attended The Impact of Women: Sports Documentaries with “ESPN 30 for 30”, featuring 30 for 30 Podcasts’ Preeti Varathan, Head of iHeart Women’s Sports Jessi Katz, and Girl v. Horse host Nicole Teeny. 

Teeny’s podcast, a four-part 30 for 30 production about overcoming her epilepsy and training to beat a horse in an ultramarathon, acted as a springboard for a wider discussion of podcasting women’s sports in general. Katz says a core drive for iHeart’s creation of the Women’s Sports network was brands coming to the company asking what they had relevant to women’s sports.

“Brands are saying they have money to spend on [women’s sports] but they’re not seeing the content to run their ads on,” said Varathan. 

“There’s strong brand affinity for those running on women’s sports. People are looking for community and those brands make that more possible by supporting the few existing podcasts, “ added Katz. “There’s so many different types of fans who’ve had nothing to consume. We’re not worried about launching too many shows about one subject because, over on the men’s side… they don’t have that problem.” 

And thanks to the proven strategy of ‘core’ podcasting, outfits like iHeart Women’s Sports can quickly spin up more and more niche shows with some confidence that their Venn diagram overlap with the general audience of core sports shows will drive audiences to either fill under-served niches or discover new ones. A simple episode on women’s golf on a core show like Good Game with Sarah Spain is, in actuality, quietly a backdoor pilot driving people to the guest expert’s own show all about women’s golf.

Brands are in tune with what their audiences want, it’s up to podcasting to both predict those wants, as well as put the work into addressing under-served niches.

Authenticity and Flexibility

Authenticity is one of podcasting’s superpowers. It came up in most interviews I conducted in the halls of On Air Fest. Station CEO Cam Pritchard brought up the consistently high brand recall numbers podcast advertisements achieve in comparison to other marketing channels. Steve Lack of Steve Lack: Audio also hit on it in his pitch for audio podcasting’s importance:

“I like audio first content because it’s such an authentic medium. And as you’re seeing, I think that Sounds Profitable has been able to show this a lot, that it builds trust. It’s not a sales pitch. It’s a trust builder, it’s a relationship builder.”

And for all that can be achieved with the highest quality gear and planning, there’s still room for scrappy improvised podcasting. In the creator conversation Unraveling Family Ties, Rococo Punch Story Editor Emily Foreman interviewed journalists Tonya Mosley and Matt Katz about their respective podcasts covering family mysteries. In Katz’ case, his series Inconceivable Truth has him seeking out information about his biological father after finding out his mother was subjected to an unethical fertility treatment that secretly incorporated an anonymous sperm donor. 

At a key narrative moment in the series, Katz has to have a tough conversation with his mother about how he was conceived. This conversation took place just after Thanksgiving dinner. Without a podcasting studio handy, he simply recorded the conversation on his iPhone. 

Sure, the audio is markedly different from the regular narration of the show, but as the clip Foreman played for the audience demonstrated, with good editing you can make one hell of a compelling podcast moment with an authentic moment and a mic, any mic. 

Okay maybe not any mic

Wrapping Up

With SXSW and the official podcast stage on the horizon it’s worth taking a moment to step back and look at the current moment as well as the future. On Air Fest has carved out a place for creative leadership to gather every year, a place to gather and take stock of where we’re at while making valuable new connections. Podcasting’s doing great. Advertisers love us. Video is doing gangbusters. The industry is full of passionate, collaborative people looking to make as many podcasts as the world will watch or listen to. The key will be harnessing that passion, and demonstrating to brands outside the world of podcasting we’re here and more than ready to work.