Here's a question worth sitting with: what happens when the thing you built your career on stops looking the way it used to?

That's exactly what's happening to podcasting right now. For years it was audio-only. You listened in the car, on a walk, doing dishes. Now video has crashed the party, and the whole industry is figuring out what that means.

I find this fascinating because I've watched the same thing happen in travel content. Blogs became videos. Videos became short clips. Readers became viewers. Nobody asked permission. The platforms just shifted, and you either adapted or got left behind.

Podcasting is going through that shift in real time.

In 2026, streaming giants like Netflix, Tubi and Hulu started building podcasts directly into their apps. Think about that for a second. The line between "watching a show" and "listening to a podcast" basically dissolved. Apple added HLS video support to its podcast platform, which means creators can now build richer, more interactive shows instead of just a static audio feed. And Spotify opened up its Partner Program to international creators, which is a nice way of saying the whole industry just got a lot more global, a lot faster.

So where does that leave the people actually making podcasts?

That's the question the latest episode of Podcast Perspectives set out to answer. It's a Signal Award-winning show, and for this one they pulled together 27 industry leaders to look back at 2026 and figure out what's coming next. Twenty-seven different perspectives on one industry. That's a lot of voices in one room, and the answers weren't all the same — which is exactly what makes it worth paying attention to.

Bryan Barletta, who runs Sounds Profitable and also leads Podcast Movement, admitted something refreshingly honest: he's worried podcasting is becoming a catch-all word for anything creator-related. His hope? That the people who actually understand audio stick around long enough to lead the space as it blends into the bigger creator economy, instead of getting swallowed by it.

Ainsley Rossitto, who heads up podcasts at beehiiv, sees something more encouraging. She's noticed podcasters thinking less like broadcasters and more like business owners. They're building newsletters. They're launching subscriptions. They're trying to own the relationship with their audience instead of renting it from a platform.

That one hit home for me. I've spent years building my own direct relationship with readers instead of depending entirely on someone else's algorithm to decide who sees my work. It's more work up front. But it's also freedom. Nobody can pull the rug out from under you if you own the connection yourself.

Sharon Taylor, Chief Revenue Officer at Triton Digital, brought the numbers. Podcasting hit record growth in 2026, and she expects double-digit growth again next year. Her concern is a good one, though: in all this talk about video and expansion, don't lose sight of why podcasting worked in the first place. Trust. Attention. The simple, human act of listening to someone talk.

So what does all this mean if you're not in the podcasting business at all?

It's a reminder that growth and identity don't always move in the same direction. You can expand into new formats, new platforms, new audiences — and still lose the thing that made people show up for you in the first place.

I think about that with every new place I visit, every new way I try to tell a story. The tools change. The destinations change. But the reason people keep listening, reading, or following along doesn't change nearly as much as you'd think.

Podcasting's heading into 2027 trying to hold onto its soul while it grows up fast. That's not a bad problem to have. The real question is what you do with the same kind of moment in your own life or work.

What are you willing to change — and what are you determined to protect?

Source: PodcastingToday

Catch up on our earlier post: Who Says You Need a Film Degree to Learn Podcasting? NYU Just Made It Official