Sounds Profitable

Sounds Profitable is the business paper of podcasting. Bryan Barletta founded it after Megaphone. Tom Webster, the researcher who spent years on Edison studies, is the partner who writes the big surveys. You get a free newsletter, free research PDFs, and a podcast feed with The Download, narrated articles, and a flagship show that still lists Bryan with Arielle Nissenblatt on monetization and ad tech. It is not a host. It is not a place to submit a show so listeners can find it.

It fits a sales desk, a network, a measurement company, or a brand buyer who has to defend audio spend. The about page names inboxes at BBC, ESPN, NPR, the New York Times, Wondery, Amazon, Apple, Spotify, Acast, Megaphone, Omny, Oxford Road, and Magellan AI. Colin Gray of Alitu and The Podcast Host, quoted on the homepage, calls it an amazing community of podcast professionals. It does not fit a hobby host who only wanted a better intro. It does not fit someone who thought the private Slack came with the free letter.

What people on the buy and sell side actually use is the research plus the room. Tom's 2026 Podcast Atlas maps how audiences move across audio, video, clips, social, and newsletters. One figure from part five: 39 percent of podcast listeners subscribe to at least one show newsletter, and 19 percent tried one and left. That is the kind of number a planning meeting can hold. Official pages say the research is free and open. A May 2026 Sounds Profitable press note puts the partner network near 210 organizations and the Slack above 2,100 people. Homepage quotes from HubSpot, Voxtopica, and YMH Studios talk about introductions, in-house sales help, and the community as the real product.

The later split is free versus partner. Letters and studies are the public layer. Paying partners get 30 minutes a month with Bryan, monthly Unplugged webinars for every employee, and seats at the quarterly Podcast Business Leaders Summit next to SXSW, Advertising Week, and The Podcast Show London. Articles carry every partner logo and no display ads. In August 2025 Podcast Movement acquired Sounds Profitable in a seven-figure deal. Bryan became President of Podcast Movement. Tom stayed on research. The live partnerships page still says Bryan and Tom fully own the firm with no outside investment. That sentence is stale. Treat the merger news as current.

Start free. Subscribe at newsletter.soundsprofitable.com. Tick the Daily Download and the Tuesday letter. Download one recent study before you book time with anyone. If your company sells into this industry, fill the partner form or email bryan@soundsprofitable.com. Use the 30 minutes for a real problem, not a pitch deck. Bring the people who talk to buyers. The Slack is for partner employees, not a personal side project.

Sounds Profitable is a trade association with a newsletter taped to the front, not a directory of shows. The deal is research you can send to a boss, and a partner room if you will pay. If you only needed yesterday's headlines, people already open Podnews. If the job is ads, measurement, and who to meet next, this is the usual vote.