New Amsterdam Records

New Amsterdam logo

New Amsterdam Records is a New York City based record label. It was formed in 2007 by Judd Greenstein, Sarah Kirkland Snider, and William Brittelle to promote classically trained musicians who fall in between traditional genre boundaries. Often abbreviated as NewAm, the organization has been hailed as a central force in creating the "indie-classical" scene.^[1] 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.

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.^[2] 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."^[3]

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."^[4]

Business model

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/publicist. As outlined in their Artist Agreement, which they post online as a public document:^[5]

• The artist retains full ownership of all material on their album, including the master recording itself.
• The gross proceeds New Amsterdam receives from album sales are split 80/20 until the artists' costs are recouped, at which point the split moves permanently to 50/50.
• Proceeds from live performances that are booked/presented by New Amsterdam, including ticket revenues, artists' fees, and CD/merch sales, are split 80/20 in favor of the artist, as are proceeds from grants submitted through the label. New Amsterdam gets nothing from shows that are booked/presented by the artists themselves or from grants submitted separately from our organization.

They are distributed by Naxos Records in North America.

Critical reception

Justin Davidson, music critic for New York magazine, says, "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."^[6]

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.^[7]

Selected Discography

References

External links

• New Amsterdam Records official website
• NPR's All Things Considered feature
• An interview of New Amsterdam Records founder Judd Greenstein with publisher J.A. Tyler