When it comes to music, the podcast sector remains in a grey area of licensing, waffling between being editorial or educational products (allowing for short snippets of songs or score) and pure commercial entities. Jared Gutstadt is the founder and innovator of Audio Up, which hosts podcasts by Anthony Anderson, Rosanna Archetti, Machine Gun Kelly and Tommy Lee. He also created Audio Up’s original music.
Bear and a Banjo, a collaboration with Jason “Poo Bear” Boyd (the hitmaker best known for his work with Justin Bieber), was his first dip into songs written specifically for a podcast and now he’s re-teamed with Poo Bear for the soundtrack to Audio Up’s scripted podcast production of Stephen King’s “Strawberry Spring.” Starring Garrett Hedlund in the lead role and featuring Milo Ventimiglia, Herizen F. Gaurdiola, Sydney Sweeney, Ken Marino, Al Madrigal, and Brec Bassinger, “Strawberry Spring” has been trending at No. Podcast charts ranked the podcast at No.1 globally, with the original music reaching wide audiences and demonstrating the distribution power of podcasts.
Courtesy of Audio Up
Under the banner Yakuza and the Bear, Gutstadt and Poo Bear, with Jeff Peters, have created a musical landscape to complement the “movie for your ears,” which Gutstadt, the founder of production music house Jingle Punks, has used to describe the immersive storytelling that has typified the scripted podcast space. “Daddy Long Legs,” the lead song from the “Strawberry Spring” soundtrack, was co-written and co-produced by the duo (listen to it below).
Gutstadt explains that the podcast world is becoming closer to Hans Zimmer’s award-winning music. After all, top Hollywood actors, directors and producers have caught the podcast bug — wouldn’t composers be the next logical step?