Maejor Frequency Is the Podcast of the Year

Jared Gutstadt was stressed. He had booked a retreat in Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains to record the soundtrack that would form the sonic underpinnings of Maejor Frequency, a 10-part podcast hosted by musician and producer Maejor and produced exclusively for Amazon-owned podcast juggernaut Audible. Gutstadt had to make sure the days away from his home base of Los Angeles were worth the investment in time and money. Maejor, a multiplatinum music producer for artists like Justin Bieber and the host and co-creator of the titular podcast, had a different approach: Slow down and listen to the rain, which he decided to use as part of the sonic backdrop. "When I got there, I was all panicked," said Gutstadt, CEO and founder of Audio Up Media, the production company behind Maejor Frequency. "He’s like, 'Dude, look around you.'" Instead of approaching the project as a stressful task that had to be completed, Maejor was looking to the natural world to serve as his guide. “It’s something that you can never get from a sound library,” Maejor told Adweek. “It's just that particular rain that day hitting that type of material recorded on that microphone, and a lot of layers and elements like that really help tell the story.” It's moments like these that define both the creative process and content of Maejor Frequency, Adweek's Podcast of the Year. Maejor reveres chance encounters, a force he calls "synchronicity." As such, the podcast came together through accidental meetings that became meaningful partnerships and friendships that served as resources for learning and understanding. This mirrors the goal of the project itself: turning people on to the power of frequency, the rate at which something vibrates, often manifested as sound, which itself has the power to heal—if you're listening. Maejor's podcast takes listeners across the world, from Malaysia to Peru to his hometown of Detroit, where he speaks to experts about the healing properties of sound and music, focusing on the specific power of particular frequencies—like 432 hertz, which is associated with perfection and beauty, and theta waves, between 4 and 8 hertz, which can trigger relaxation and creativity. But, while it's rooted in the sonic, the project’s thesis is broader. On the first season's final episode, tech entrepreneur Adam Curry compares humans to the bacteria found in the intestines, only conscious of their own existence and not aware that they’re part of a greater whole. “If we think of ourselves as part of a living universe and we feel small, then we’re doing it wrong,” said Curry, a proponent of the theory that all matter has consciousness. Getting people to listen a little better to the signals the wider world is putting out in the form of frequency is Maejor’s raison d’etre. That philosophy is not dissimilar to the purpose of media writ large: bringing the outside world to consumers. But it’s not an easy proposition, especially for subscription-based media like Maejor Frequency. A recent poll from eMarketer found that 30% of U.S. consumers are cutting back on streaming services and subscriptions. Meanwhile, subscriptions in the podcasting world are still very nascent, resulting in less than 5% of revenue across the industry, according to TuneIn vp and gm of podcasts Mike Chambers. But Maejor Frequency has managed to resonate on Audible Plus, becoming the No. 4 podcast on the platform during the first 30 days following its January 2022 release, the No. 1 podcast in its health and wellness category and No. 2 across all categories. It's also been renewed for a second season, for which Gutstadt and Maejor have big plans. Finding beats, then vibrations Before he was a student of the universe, Maejor was a pillar of the mainstream, producing for chart-toppers including Anitta, Nicki Minaj, Frank Ocean and Snoop Dogg in addition to Bieber. Born Brandon Green, Maejor taught himself music production by watching YouTube videos. Starting with hip-hop, a genre that relies on sampling other artists’ beats, Maejor trained himself at an early age to always listen to what the world threw at him. “[I would] go to the record store and buy vinyl records and get samples,” Maejor said. “[I would] be waiting for that one moment of something good that I could catch and I could flip and make a beat.” After a bevy of production credits, Maejor was breaking out as a solo artist, with a big single and a major contract. But at the moment superstardom seemed all but imminent, Maejor was diagnosed with leukemia. A period of depression, sickness and misdirection followed during which friends introduced Maejor to yoga and he was turned on to using sound to heal the body. While skeptical at first, Maejor became fascinated by the notion that the very building blocks of his artistry—vibrations and frequency—could be curative. Cancer itself became a kind of serendipity. "If you told me the day before I got leukemia that I would be on the bleeding edge of bringing sound healing into the mainstream of music, I probably would have thought you were crazy," Maejor said in one of the episodes. "My purpose was given to me by something completely random, but waves of synchronicity kept hitting me." An accidental friendship turns sounds into narrative The success of the show today notwithstanding, Maejor never dreamed of becoming a top podcaster. It all started with a party crasher. Gutstadt, then known as "Jingle Jared" behind creative audio agency Jingle Punks, was taking a drunken stroll down Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood when he stumbled into The Nice Guy, a bar that was hosting a private party with a crowd of celebrity attendees, including Bieber. Gutstadt struck up a conversation with Bieber, who introduced him to Maejor. Gutstadt and Maejor stayed in touch after that, collaborating on music for movies, but no big projects. It was an easy friendship, Gutstadt said. “His positive outlook on life really rubbed off on me. I used to complain a little bit,” Gutstadt said. “[Maejor would say], ‘Look around you. You have these beautiful kids. You have these nice cars. You get to do all this, and that's just from music.” Fast forward about five years, and Gutstadt had founded Audio Up, and Maejor was deep into his sonic journey, releasing an album at different sonic frequencies. Audible approached Gutstadt asking if he had anything in the health and wellness space, and Gutstadt thought of Maejor, who was interested in prescriptive audio for mind, body and soul. And Maejor Frequency was born. Maejor saw the happy coincidence of a big podcast deal, despite not being familiar with the space, as an advantage. “I don't know the standard 'way to do it,'” Maejor said. “We just approached it from the perspective of what's the best creative way?” While the podcast is an investigation, Maejor said he didn’t want to approach it like a reporter. He has personal relationships with all his guests and didn’t want to probe them in a way that made them uncomfortable. But he knew his relationships with people in the music industry—including Boi-1da, a producer for Drake and Kanye West, and DJ Martin Garrix—were valuable. “Music producers—we're nerds who sit at a desk and program … these frequencies in a way that it makes you feel like you want to dance or you want to cry," said Maejor, who turned interviews with friends such as these into chapters for the podcast, with each telling a story about the power of a particular frequency. Subscription model, meet flow state Another undeniable force behind the podcast was Audible. "Maejor Frequency was our debut project with [Audio Up] and it’s exceeded all expectations; we knew we had a hit right out of the gate," said Pat Shah, head of content acquisition and development at Audible. The deal granted the streaming platform exclusivity, and in exchange, Audible paid for upfront costs and took responsibility for marketing, according to Gutstadt. “We were just focusing on making this thing,” he added, noting that's a different experience than working on ad-supported podcasts. “With other partners, I had to sit with ad agencies and explain projects and sing for my supper.” Despite these advantages, the subscription model typically garners a smaller audience, and it's only available to select talent, said David Clinch, head of global partnerships at media consultancy Mather Economics. “It’s really difficult to get an audience if you’re not already somebody that people are searching for on a podcast,” Clinch said. For now, the success of Maejor Frequency has been enough to open doors to other forms of IP, including a television show in development with a major studio (Maejor was unable to elaborate further), of which Amazon will get a cut. But for Maejor, one of the biggest payoffs is opening up the world of frequencies. The practice is still outside the mainstream, but those who have used sound healing to cure their illnesses managed to find the podcast and reach out to Maejor, penning DMs about how Maejor Frequency validated their experiences. “It was just a synchronistic thing,” Maejor said. Check out all of Adweek's Podcast of the Year Awards winners here.

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