Correction: In the article, Quadio is mentioned to be developing a mobile app. The app has been up and running since yesterday March 27, 2020.
Lang student and Quadio Campus Representative Nic Doelger was used to uploading his music through Spotify but had a more satisfying and encouraging experience uploading to a new streaming platform, Quadio Media.
“I have gotten a lot of messages of just nice things, which has been really, really great. It just made me feel good as an artist,” said Doelger.
Quadio is an up-and-coming music streaming platform just for college communities. Quadio is live for everyone with a college email address now. It allows users to listen to music from their peers and allows musicians to upload original music. Anyone with a college email account can join for free, and connect with local artists.
“There was a niche that was not being filled; which was ways for people who made music on college campuses to connect with each other and collaborate,” said Director of Campus Representatives Eve Wetlaufer.
While Quadio is open to all colleges within the United States, The New School, in particular, has a real need for the platform, say Quadio’s representatives.
“I think one of the priorities at The New School is putting itself on the map because we are fairly new compared to a lot of other universities. I think this [Quadio] is just another way for The New School to do that,” said Campus Representative and musician Joelle Bensaid.
Representatives like Bensaid and Doelger do not get paid to be campus representatives and view it as an activity rather than a job.
“I have met so many people my age, even younger, who are so good at what they do but they just go so unrecognized. So I feel like we need to do something about that,” said Nic Doelger.
Doelger also believes Quadio will help strengthen the community at The New School as well as help student musicians succeed by creating unity between students and connecting artists. Quadio encourages users to give feedback to musicians and he believes this will help make artists more confident and comfortable with their music. He sees The New School’s spread out campus as making it more difficult for students to find a community and believes Quadio provides a place for connection between peers.
“I think, especially, the New School community is not the strongest, even just looking at the size of our school store,” said Doelger.
Once on the platform, users can listen to music specifically from their university, state, region, or they can look nationally within the United States. All music is uploaded directly from the musicians. Quadio includes built-in music charts that allow users to see which songs are at the top of either the “hot” or all-time charts. The hot chart shows songs that have the current most amount of plays and likes, and the all-time chart shows the most played and most liked songs all together within the platform. The charts can also be specific to the genre.
Beyond being a streaming platform, however, Quadio hopes to also be a website where users can build a community. Quadio allows users to get in contact with people of a variety of professions that might help them advance their music careers. Under the community tab, users can pick their professional background, like agent or manager, and can pick which type of user they are looking for, like drummer or graphic designer. So, if someone is a drummer to accompany a lead vocalist, they can find them on Quadio.
Unlike other music streaming platforms like Spotify or Apple Music, users can message directly with anyone on the app, including musicians. This allows for feedback from listeners and close connection within a community. Musicians can also upload work-in-progress tracks where users can make comments or advice.
Nic Doelger views Spotify as more of a place for numbers, but Quadio is a place for human connection. “It’s much more satisfying feedback of positivity; it’s all very genuine,” said Doelger, citing kind and encouraging comments and messages he received after posting his music. Quadio has made collaboration more successful, said Eve Wetlaufer, the Director of Campus Representatives.
Quadio hopes to expand to an app, as it is currently only a web-based platform. They also hope to introduce a homepage for the platform, as well as an events tab, where each university will have a calendar of live events.
