The Huge On Air Fest Recapapalooza
What we loved, learned, listened to, and ate during our week at On Air Fest 2026
Hi! Welcome to Podcasts We Text About
Lauren & Arielle here 👋
Happy Friday! We just spent the week at On Air Fest, Brooklyn’s annual celebration of audio storytelling. It’s a cultural festival where podcasters, creators, and industry folks gather to talk craft, community, and the future of sound. (They, not us, call it the "Coachella of Podcasts.” We do not refer to it as this because… we like it a lot).
If you’ve been following us at all, you know that we spoke at the event yesterday. This issue of Podcasts We Text About is about that, the festival itself, and the podcast industry dinner we hosted at our favorite restaurant, Málà Project.
EVEN EARLIER IN THE WEEK, we attended the Podcast Business Summit, the unofficial kickoff to On Air Fest. It was a full day of panels, interviews, and discussions about the wider world of podcasting and media-making — and the money that makes it all go ‘round.
We spent the day furiously typing into a shared note so that we could share our takeaways with you! That stuff is saved for our Texters (our our paid subscribers — we 💜 you). We’ll also expand on ALL of this in an upcoming live session.
The Coachella of Podcasts
On Air Fest 2026 - From Our Ears to Yours
On Air Fest has been around for almost 10 years. We look forward to it every single year and we’re so honored to have been given a stage this year. We took the responsibility very seriously and (to pat ourselves on the back) put together a pretty cool presentation. More on that below. First, we’ll recap the festivities, speakers, and atmosphere.
The Vibe / Setup
The event takes place at the Wythe Hotel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It’s a chic spot (that we feel like we know really well at this point after attending OAF for almost 10 years!) with aesthetic, vibey furniture, art installations in the bathrooms, two cozy and delish restaurants, and skyline views. Over the years, On Air Fest gets bigger and bigger while the venue stays the same size. BUT NOT THIS YEAR — in addition to the Wythe’s presentation rooms and stages, the festival expanded to the Arlo Hotel. And for the second year, there was a space dedicated to creators in a building right next door.
OAF is one of the rare events that takes feedback seriously and genuinely iterates (and improves) from one year to the next. Last year, for the first year of Creator Space, there was one extremely slow-moving elevator shepherding people up to the presentation space. This year, same situation, BUT they made clear signs pointing to the stair option. Small things like that make this festival a truly great one.
We were set up in the Creator Space — asking people about their podcast consumption habits, as we are wont to do. Here’s what that looked like:
STAY TUNED for the big giant playlist we’re making of alllllll the shows people wrote on that poster. We’ll share the list and discuss on an upcoming live session.
We ALSO interviewed event attendees on camera about their favorite podcasts, how they discover new shows, how they feel about ads, and more. Our goal was to then cut together a video to show on stage to cap off our informal, slightly biased study of podcast consumer habits — comparing answers of those out in the world with those inside On Air Fest. We’ll post those videos soon.
ICYMI: find our early “out in the world” videos and insights here
Our Session, “A Hyper-Local, Slightly Opinionated Study of Podcast Listening”
Here’s the webpage with the official description
We shared videos from our on-the-street interviews and then capped it off with a video from the festival. We wanted to display the differences and similarities between the outside world and event attendees — and how the respondent’s answers would potentially inform creators’ approaches to their work.
A few things that stuck with us:
Big Tech seems to want us to believe everyone is watching podcasts. But when we asked, people mentioned they watched them just sometimes… more of a glancing situation. Most of the people we spoke to report that they listen when doing other things.
People said they skipped ads, but did they? Just because they couldn’t remember specific advertisers when we asked doesn’t mean they didn’t hear them. Tom Webster, the moderator of our session, pointed out that it’s tough to remember an ad when someone is just throwing a microphone in your face, and that for some people, it’s cool to proclaim you aren’t into the ads.
P.s. Dan Misener of Bumper Media wrote about this recently
Someone’s entry point to podcasts is important, and many of the young people we talked to got that entry point via their parents. “Apple Podcasts? Oh yeah, my dad listens on that.” “My mom made me listen to Serial.” “My mom listens to Radiolab.” For many of us who’ve been listening for a while, our entry point was certainly not our parents! For us, it was the other way around! (Some of us are STILL trying to get them to listen.)
The main juxtaposition between our interviews with people on the street and our interviews with OAF attendees was: how do you define the word “podcast.” So many thoughts, here! Is it something on-demand? Does it need to come from a podcast app? Is it a file that exists on an RSS feed? Is it two guys with a microphone? Is it anyone talking, anywhere? Is…everything a podcast?
And the main takeaway is that… no one knows right now. But at the same time… everyone knows. As Tom Webster shared, the customer is always right.
Ultimately, it’s not up to us to define what a podcast is. But it is up to us to decide if we need to differentiate between chat shows, video shows, narrative shows, and others. Do they need separate names? If so, what would you call them? (Shout out in the comments!)
THANK YOUs:
To Amanda McLoughlin, our incredible producer. Thank you for being the steady hand behind the camera and for making sure we were well-positioned for success! You are SO GOOD at what you do and everyone should work with Multitude.
To Tom Webster, our session moderator. The perfect straight man to our ridiculousness. Thanks for hearing about our idea and jumping right in. Subscribe to Sounds Profitable.
To On Air Fest. We got to work WITH the organizers to dream up this cool project. Thank you to Jennifer Sendrow and Scott Newman for their early ideas and to Erin Keating for making sure we had all we needed on site. And to the behind-the-scenes organizers who corralled us, you rock.
To the folks who attended our session. You had the best questions and insights! And made us think even more. (We smell loads of follow-up articles and discussions).
There were so many sessions we wish we could’ve attended but just did not have the time! We’ll discuss what we did see and hear on an upcoming LIVE, stay tuned for that link.
ALSO TO COME:
Notes on our Málà dinner and future partnerships ideas
More videos! We recorded a bunch of interviews and we’ll roll ‘em out over the coming weeks
That big list of podcast recommendations we promised via the sign we installed at OAF
Other things, we’re sure we missed in this one
Next up, for the paid subscribers (our Texters), you’ll see our notes from the Podcast Business Summit.
Thank you for reading our recap! Have any questions? Hit the comments, please.
💛💜Lauren & Arielle
