Country of origin U.S. Official website www.newamrecords.com Date founded 2007 | Location New York City Founder Judd Greenstein Distributor Naxos Records | |
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Genre Contemporary classical, avant-garde Headquarters Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States Albums Unremembered, Infernal Machines, Balter/Saunier, Real Enemies, Katrina Ballads Profiles | ||
New Amsterdam Records is a record label in New York City that was formed in 2007 by Judd Greenstein, Sarah Kirkland Snider, and William Brittelle to promote classically trained musicians who fall between traditional genre boundaries. Often abbreviated as NewAm, the organization has been hailed as a central force in creating the "indie-classical" scene. In 2011, the organization established New Amsterdam Presents, a non-profit artist's service organization under which New Amsterdam Records is the for-profit subsidiary.
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Background
New Amsterdam Records was founded to support the developing genre of music coming from people with great educations in composition who were also influenced by pop and jazz music and did not fit into the music industry binary of classical or pop. NewAm has been described favorably by Seth Colter Walls in Newsweek as breaking down genre boundaries, "making a nice little tradition out of breaking tradition," and striking a healthy balance between old traditions (such as classical and jazz) and contemporary music."
In an interview with mental floss magazine, co-founder Judd Greenstein explains that they look for artists "whose work is a reflection of truly integrated musical influences. In other words, we don’t want classical-goes-rock or electronic-music-with-some-violins – we want music where people are being as personal and honest as they can be, while opening themselves up fully to all the music that they love."
Business model
Making an album can involve many costs, such as renting a recording studio, paying the musicians, creating album art, and manufacturing copies of the album. At New Amsterdam, the musician, not the label, picks up the cost of making the album, but the musician gets a higher percentage of royalties that come from sales.
New Amsterdam Records is modeled like a non-profit, calling themselves a "pro-artist" label, where the majority of proceeds go directly to the artist, and New Amsterdam works mainly as a promoter and publicist. As outlined in their Artist Agreement, which they post online as a public document:
They are distributed by Naxos Records in North America.
Critical reception
Justin Davidson, music critic for New York, wrote, "They're part of this generation of people who get out of music school with all of these incredible skills, and all of this culture, and all of this creativity — fully aware that nobody is going to hand them a career. There's no superstructure of an established music industry that is going to pay any attention to these people, because they're not even paying attention to the much more established, mainstream conductors and violinists and orchestras. The ability to get noticed by having some record executive take an interest in you and record you — you know, that's really practically a thing of the past. If you want to make recordings, you've really got to do it yourself."
NewAm have been compared to Bang on a Can, who also built their own label, community, and performance circuit, in a similar manner, 20 years ago. The difference, however, between the two is that Bang on a Can shared a common musical aesthetic — minimalism — whereas NewAm is more of a musical umbrella. NewAm's artists have become increasingly popular among a broad public while Bang on a Can's primary supporters continue to be larger, more established cultural institutions. "The interesting thing about this group of people, and New Amsterdam, is the real lack of interest in anything that you could call aesthetic categories, or rules about what does and doesn't belong in their sphere of influence," Justin Davidson says.