While everyone is learning TikTok dances and baking banana bread during their quarantine, a new college-based streaming service is providing another source of remote entertainment for college students everywhere. Entering from the music corner, welcome Quadio. 

Conceived in October 2018, two unlikely step-cousins set out on an immensely successful journey out of their New York City apartment. Marcus and Joe Welch, the masterminds behind the streaming service, envisioned a platform where college musicians and creatives could collaborate, meet each other and simply be aware that the other exists. 

“I got to campus on day one and was super excited to collaborate and meet all these people to work together with, but it was so much harder than I thought to find these people,” stated Joe Welch, who now serves as the head of the Quadio Artist Relations (AR) department. 

Welch, an EDM producer himself, graduated from Williams College in 2018. His experiences as a musician in college kickstarted Quadio’s initial conceptualization. 

“I had this songwriting class senior year, and I met so many insane vocalists, instrumentalists and all these extremely talented people who I had been on campus with for four years but had never met,” said Welch. “That was the impetus behind the collaboration aspect. You should be able to get to campus from day one and know about every single creative on your campus so you can maximize your potential all four years.” 

A year and a half later, Welch is fresh-off Quadio’s mobile app release on March 26 and one of the creatives heading the charge of Quadio’s now over 40-member strong start-up. As the leader of AR, he reaches out to college musicians from around the country (notably, through a cheeky DM on Instagram) and invites them to join the platform. 

However, joining a new music-exposure platform and uploading your music with SoundCloud-esque ease isn’t the only perk of the app. Quadio boasts live events in big-name venues of every city (though currently postponed due to COVID-19), a partnership with Snapchat, artist highlights posted on social media and a myriad of in-app functionalities to make collaboration as smooth as a Frank Ocean B-side. 

Quadio is structured in four separate ecosystems: college, state, region and nation. Beginning at the school level, the app organizes every in-school track into recently uploaded, hot and all-time charts. In addition, the “discover” feed allows students on the platform to tag themselves as “Looking for” something. Are you a producer in need of a vocalist in your community? There’s a tag for that. What about a saxophonist who needs a videographer? There’s a tag for that too. 

With a multitude of creatives encompassing mixing engineers, producers, harpists, photographers and managers, Quadio makes them accessible to each other in one place. 

In addition, as tracks move up their individual school charts, they have the potential to gain exposure at the statewide, regional or even national levels. 

“It’s just an interesting time in streaming in general, but hopefully the app can really start mobilizing that listener base,” said Welch. “Hopefully with the mobile now and playlists also coming soon, that can really start energizing the listener base to be incentivized to go check out what’s going on in their community and the artists and talent that exist at campuses nationwide.” 

Interesting may be an understatement for coronavirus’s upheaval to society in recent months. It’s not the ideal time to release a brand new app that was scheduled to be released with live events in Boston, Nashville, New York, Boulder and many other areas of the country. 

However, Quadio is making the best of the situation. The platform just wrapped up their first-ever March Music Madness tournament, fit with brackets and a final winner, the University of North Dakota band, Silver Warehouse. Currently, they are running a continuous Live From Inside Instagram live series (featuring all college musicians) and an upcoming April 18 “Concert for Covid Relief.” For every audition tape submitted from hopeful college musicians looking to be included in the event, Quadio will be donating $1 to the Global Giving Foundation. 

“What we really want to be is a place that can ideally help bring people together during this time,” Welch stated. “What better way to get together than bonding over music, bonding over your community and kind of being together with each other? Even though it’s not the utmost ideal state, hopefully, we can be that welcome place with the mobile application.” 

The application is keeping people busy during their quarantine time as students around the country can find college equivalents of their favorite musicians. You like Rosalía? Try Stanford’s Linda Sol. Are you Billie Eilish’s biggest fan? Start listening to Drexel University’s Channa. Many of DU’s own artists are already populating the platform, too.

So what’s on the Quadio agenda for the future? A desktop app, playlists and a hopeful reintroduction to the live events world are all on the docket. 

“It’s just exciting,” said Welch. “If this sticks in the college music angle, there’s just so many exciting scaling potential for the long term: fleshing out more of the other creative aspects, better catering to photography and video and all this other creation. There are a lot of other exciting potential future goals, especially around product functionality, that will make it the best experience for everyone.” 

Quadio is winning college musicians’ hearts all across the country—and maybe yours too. 

*Grace Ganz is a Quadio campus representative. Feel free to reach out with questions concerning the app. 

Instagram: @quadiomedia

Twitter: @QuadioMedia

TikTok: @quadiomedia

Facebook: @quadiomedia