Bryan is founder of Sounds Profitable and president of Podcast Movement — this interview has been lightly edited for style and readability
Bryan Barletta: Sounds Profitable is the trade association for the business of podcasting on a global level. Our goal is to bring the industry together and help people through networking, conversations, research and opportunities to push podcasting into bigger than podcasting spaces.
James Cridland: The next event that I will see you at is The Podcast Show in London, but the next big event on the calendar is what you announced in Podnews at the end of February. Podcast Movement moving to New York City, and a really interesting flagship event at a place called Terminal 5. What are the plans for New York city?
BB: Terminal 5 is a concert venue that has a lot of personal significance for me. I actually got my start in advertising by borrowing enough money to go to a four day concert at Terminal 5. When I was doing mobile app reviews, so being able to go to this venue is really, really exciting for me.
JC: Who did you see there?
BB: Coheed and Cambria, whose albums are all Star Wars-esque style stories, and they played them all in order, two a night, and it was really fun. I grabbed my computer and my mini DV camera, and we drove out and just recorded videos all day long, and then went to the concerts that night.
The event is really three events. So we have it for the whole week, Monday through Friday.
Starting with what everybody knows and loves, Podcast Movement, that’s going to be Thursday and Friday. This is going to be an event built for creators. I think that people in the business of podcasting have pushed into different aspects of Podcast Movement before, and I’ve personally been frustrated when there have been specific creator tracks that end up having business panels because they run out of spots elsewhere. We are going as heavily community sourced as possible for this. The tickets are going to be $200 covering both days. There should be about a thousand tickets available on sale. We’ll have five stages. Panels will be about a half an hour long each. There’ll be photos, audio, video recordings of everything there. And we’re trying to figure out the most equitable way for people to submit panel ideas. I’m not completely sold on a committee, but I think that’s going to be part of it. I’m not completely sold on a public vote. It ends up being a popularity contest, but it might be part of it. We’re trying to nail that down with ideally giving people as close to two and a half to three months of notice on when they’re selected so that if they need any international travel or anything there, they can get that sorted. We haven’t even identified how far we want to go with perhaps like an expo type setup, but we are getting interest on that.
The middle day, we’re still solidifying. The IAB Podcast Upfronts are going to be held separately by the IAB during that day. We’re not doing any conflicting content there, but at night we have the opportunity with Terminal 5 being such a massive venue. What could we do on that stage there? So we’re still fielding a few opportunities there and trying to find the best partner to allow for us to do something really to celebrate audio with everyone. That won’t be a ticketed event. So we’re trying to figure out how that fits into everything.
Everybody who’s attending both of the other events, the Sounds Profitable one, which we’ll get into, or the Podcast Movement one, will be able to go.
The first two days are our take on a more professional business summit. This is a 600 person total event.
There is going to be two anchor keynotes, one at the beginning and the end of each day, where everyone, all 600 people, will be able to focus on one thing.
From there, there’s going to be three different opportunities to select between: breakout sessions or working groups or 50 person “conversations in a circle” - where people really want to be part of the conversation. We’re all experts at an event of this scale - all the way to 150 people sitting in an audience for more specific and driven conversations in a panel. The intention is that this is an event that you pop in and out of, or that has open networking space. We want to start it at 10 am, and we want to end it at 4 pm. It’s New York people, in the business of podcasting. People in advertising know how to entertain their own guests, so we’re moving away from things like sponsored happy hours, because we want to let people celebrate and do their own thing. And we don’t want them to feel, you know, that they have to pay into something when they have their own place in New York. There’s so many companies in New York that have their own space to do all of that. So we’re really, really excited to partner there.
200 of the attendees will be buyers. Those are freely available tickets. And then the other 400 tickets are a higher price point because they’re sponsorship for the whole event. If you buy a ticket, your company is a sponsor for the event, you’re going to have access to the attendee list. You’re gonna have opportunities to connect with people and book those breakfasts and dinners. And you’re also going to be the sponsor of the Podcast Movement side of the event. The model that we’re going for this is going to be $2,000 per ticket. And Sounds Profitable partners will have the opportunity to buy tickets for the first month before they’re open to the public. We’re letting the Sounds Profitable partners buy up to two tickets per company. And as partners, they can choose who goes Monday versus who goes Tuesday.
If there are any tickets available, they will be open to the public for one per company at the same price. Our partners are what makes all this possible, and what allows us to take these big swings, allows us to buy a stage at Advertising Weet Europe and us and get panel costs down to $4,000 and just bring a whole group of people who haven’t been able to push into those spaces. We really want to reward those partners for that support and encourage more people to consider becoming a partner.
JC: And of course you can, you can attend all of it.
BB: Absolutely. I think one of the ways we hit our stride was because we understood the price point sensitivity for the industry. We are competing with every other industry that’s competing for attention. With a third of the audience being buyers and our focus on connecting people, I think that this is really great.
JC: When can we buy tickets for that? Not quite yet. I’m guessing?
BB: Our goal is to get all of this live for ticket sales in the next four weeks. We just want to make sure that we have the website exactly where it is.
JC: Always good to catch up, Bryan.
BB: Thank you so much for your time.