The Guild was built by people who worked inside the podcast industry's biggest awards programs and walked away, unwilling to keep watching popularity stand in for quality and hard-earned recognition disappear from the internet. It exists so that podcasts are judged on craft, growth, and contribution to the medium, and so that every honor stays permanently on the record. If you have spent your career caring about that standard, this invitation is for you.

Membership is open to the people who make podcasting work: producers, editors, writers, hosts, audio engineers, sound designers, journalists, network and studio staff, and veterans of other awards programs who share the conviction that the system can be done right.

Members are the Guild. They serve on the judging panels for the Annual Awards, evaluating entries in every genre against published criteria, with no download figures in sight. They lend their names and reputations to a program whose honors are meant to be worth citing for decades, and they help hold the Guild to the promises its founders made: judge the work, honor reach on its own terms, and never let a winner's page vanish.

This is not a subscription with perks. It is a working role in a body of professionals who believe recognition in podcasting should mean something, and who are willing to put their expertise behind that belief.

If that describes you, we would be honored to have you. Apply to join the Guild, tell us about your work in the medium, and help us judge the next class of podcasts the way they have always deserved to be judged.

There are no costs or dues.