‘The music industry has been waiting for something like CADA’: Emily Copeland

The music industry across the board – from artists to advertisers, and labels to fans – will benefit from the launch of CADA, the platform’s general manager, Emily Copeland, has predicted.

CADA is the brain child of Copeland and the wider ARN team, which relaunched the radio brand The Edge 96.1 as a reimagined audio, video, content and music platform which aims to reach a national audience of hip hop and R&B fans.

The company has said it won’t program CADA like a radio station, instead taking a multi-platform approach to reach a diverse audience hungry for content and engagement.

Copeland told TMN the reaction to CADA’s launch had been “incredibly positive”.

“I think that the music industry has been waiting for a platform like CADA, which can support local artists but also global artists right through their careers – so from emerging right the way through to established – but also that we’re giving artists the ability to reach national audiences, and not just through audio content, but also through socials and videos, which means that artists have got this ability to reach quite a large audience with us,” she said.

“And hip hop and R&B lovers have finally got this national audio platform dedicated to the genre.”

CADA’s resonance and connection with the music industry is further solidified by its team, according to Copeland, who said they “are all true music lovers”.

“CADA is not just going to be about putting songs on the radio. We’re really about championing artists and their voices.

“And the whole CADA team realise that without artists, CADA wouldn’t exist.”

Despite the shake-up, the brand will also remain loyal to its predecessor The Edge and maintain its key points of difference as well, she said.

“The Edge has got this long history of supporting hip hop and R&B, but we looked at this as ‘Okay, well if we create a multi-platform national youth brand that’s going to enable us to really increase our sphere of influence, and we’ll be able to reach a really broad and diverse audience’.

“And that’s exactly where it started from and that’s how CADA was built,” she said.

“So CADA will be associated with everything that The Edge stands for, which is being the home of hip hip and R&B, being a place that brings fans closer to culture, being a platform that really champions artists both locally and around the globe. And so that’s what I’m hoping CADA will come to mean for the audience,” she added.

Copeland revealed that while she wants ‘CADA’ to mean “Australia’s home of hip hop and R&b” in the hearts and minds of those who engage with it, the word in and of itself doesn’t have a set definition.

“CADA actually doesn’t have a meaning. And what we love about the name CADA is that it brings to mind ‘cadence’. So it’s that tempo of music and beats which is perfect for a brand which champions hip hip and R&B, because that’s what we’re all about – the tempo and music and beat.

“But we love that choosing a name that has no meaning enables us to build the meaning around it.”