Music website Awdio has been creating a buzz in dance circles for a while now. It streams music – DJ sets and live shows – from clubs and venues around the world. We fired a few questions at CEO Julien Ulrich to find out what’s next for the company.
How are things going for Awdio? How is the site growing, and what’s been driving that growth?
Things are great : we’ve signed up an additional 50 clubs since October (among which Cargo in London, Pacha in Sao Polo, Inbeat in Montreal, etc. ) and are shooting for 300 by year end. Audience is way up, mostly driven by our clubs and word of mouth although the site is available from anywhere in the world and in English. We’re officially launching in the UK this month with the support of our first big sponsor, Hennessy, the Cognac brand from the LVMH group: tune in on the 21st of March to listen to Secretsundaze live from La Scala in London.Next targets are Germany, the US, and of course well be in Ibiza and probably Kazantip , then sometimes after the summer in Asia.
What have been the key new features / content introduced in recent months
The main feature has really consisted of making Awdio free for our listeners thanks to the help of our sponsors! Content-wise, weve added many clubs as I already said, and have started organizing special events such as Laurent Garnier live from the end on New Years Eve or Secretsundaze at La Scala on March 21st.
How are your relationships with venues changing? Do they have different priorities / demands to when you started?
Our relationship with venues is evolving very quickly for the better. There is quite a buzz on Awdio at the moment, and clubs realize that were onto something.They reacted overwhelmingly positively when we announced we were going free with sponsors back in the fall, because they see that we can help get them even broader recognition with the public, not to mention that we’re living up to our promises by redistributing part of our revenue!As more and more artists are sensitive to our approach and support us, the venues know that we respect them, that were in the game for the love of music and that were bringing something really new to the space.
What new features are you looking at introducing in the near future – how could this evolve?
There are so many things were planning on doing! We launching a new release sometimes this coming April, with a bunch of new things. The first new feature that we are going to offer is track-listing, with shortly after that the ability for you to buy the track from an existing store when they are recognized.
