By VALERIE BARBOSA
Contributing Writer
Quadio is a music tech company and streaming platform, created in 2018 by co-founders Joe and Marcus Welch. The founders, all recent college graduates, developed Quadio with the objective to unify college musicians across the country and provide them with collaboration and networking opportunities that they couldn’t find anywhere else. Quadio is a mobile application and website, currently with artists in all fifty states. It is represented by approximately 100 campus representatives.
The goal of these representatives is to spread the world of Quadio on campus as well as host virtual concerts, virtual songwriting clubs, open mics, and feedback sessions with the intention to build the community of musicians on their campus.
Saint Rose senior and music industry major Thea Mundy took on the role of campus representative after participating in the Quadio Summer Songwriting Club, a six week long virtual workshop conducted by a moderator combining more than 100 college musicians of all genres, ages, and locations. Mundy had used the Quadio application before, but was unaware of the opportunities it could provide her musical career until she was accepted into the songwriting club. During the club’s duration, she met collaborators that were campus representatives for Quadio and reached out to the director of campus representatives to see if she could represent the College of Saint Rose.
“[Quadio] is a great resource to bring to campus and to the music community here…It has positively impacted me because because I’ve met all these people from different schools in different programs from the Zoom call…someone that I met through this is producing one of the songs on my senior album,” said Mundy. I definitely wouldn’t have met him if I hadn’t done this, and if we hadn’t collaborated before.”
To help expand knowledge of Quadio on campus, Mundy said she hopes to give presentations to Rose Record Label, Music Industry Student Association (M.I.S.A.), and freshman music business classes. She perceives underclassmen to be the target audience as they’re the newest members of the musical community.
Mundy is currently recording her senior album project, titled “Frame By Frame,” and plans to release it on Quadio and all other major platforms this winter.
The director of campus representatives, Eve Wetlaufer, thoroughly explained the aspirations of Quadio. She described that not only does Quadio host songwriting clubs, but they also have a producers club, an artist management club, and a record label called Quadio Records.
The coronavirus has presented obstacles, yet Quadio is operating around them by conducting virtual performances like Instagram live concerts and School Spotlights, which are Instagram posts that highlight a college and a Spotify playlist where music from that specific college’s population is shared. Another unique feature of Quadio is the option to upload one’s music as an unfinished product in order to workshop it with others.
“We are doing a lot of things under the umbrella of Quadio, but at its very core Quadio hopes to amplify college artists,” said Wetlaufer.
Jasmine Hancock, a music industry junior at Saint Rose, also participated in Quadio’s Summer Songwriting Club. She said that working with Quadio was an amazing networking opportunity that aided in growing her musicianship, and allowed her to work with artists she would never have met if she hadn’t participated in the program.
“Working with Quadio has definitely shaped me into a better musician just by keeping me motivated and allowing me to connect with individuals with similar goals, which also allows for more collaborative partnerships and being able to receive more feedback on my work,” wrote Hancock in an email.
Hancock will release her first EP at the end of October.
Nice article, great accomplishment